tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/racial-inequality-18121/articlesRacial inequality – The Conversation2024-01-29T13:07:34Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2173912024-01-29T13:07:34Z2024-01-29T13:07:34ZSouth Africa is failing people who aren’t poor, but aren’t middle class either<p>Many South African households are trapped. They are neither poor nor middle class. As a demographic they hover above the indigence threshold financially. But they are not yet securely in the middle class. </p>
<p>This aspirant middle class – individuals whose income is above the indigent thresholds but too low to afford the middle-class lifestyle – <a href="https://econpapers.repec.org/article/eeewdevel/v_3a60_3ay_3a2014_3ai_3ac_3ap_3a132-146.htm">is growing</a> in metropolitan areas globally. This class is financially vulnerable, with a higher risk of falling back into poverty compared to the established middle class. </p>
<p>We set out to understand the challenges faced by this aspirant middle class in South Africa and the key determinants of their progression. We <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2865">investigated</a> the salient factors that trap them in their progression towards a stable middle class. We used Johannesburg as our case study.</p>
<p>Our research found that several key factors affected this demographic. These include education, racial inequality, access to economic opportunities, entrepreneurship and proximity to amenities.</p>
<p>The findings have important implications for public policy in South Africa. They point to the need for hybrid policy frameworks that not only alleviate poverty but also sustain and expand the middle class. These policies should aim at ensuring social equity, reflecting the needs of the aspirant middle class and integrating them into broader economic and development strategies. </p>
<h2>The aspirant middle class and why it matters</h2>
<p>The middle class aspirants comprise <a href="https://www.datafirst.uct.ac.za/dataportal/index.php/collections/GCRO">about 30%</a> of the population based on the authors’ analysis of the 2018 Quality of Life Survey data released by the Gauteng City Region Observatory.</p>
<p><a href="https://econpapers.repec.org/article/eeewdevel/v_3a60_3ay_3a2014_3ai_3ac_3ap_3a132-146.htm">Studies</a> have <a href="https://documents.worldbank.org/pt/publication/documents-reports/documentdetail/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities">suggested</a> US$10 per capita per day as the absolute minimum income in the developing world for a person to attain middle-class status.</p>
<p>In South Africa the upper-bound poverty line for individuals to benefit from the indigent policy is US$4.5 per capita per day. This leaves individuals with incomes between US$4.5 and US$10 per capita per day as neither poor nor middle class. </p>
<p>Middle class aspirants are important for several reasons.</p>
<p>Firstly, they often represent a significant consumer base, driving demand for goods and services. Secondly, they are likely to invest in education and healthcare, contributing to human capital development. Thirdly, their aspirations for upward mobility can foster a culture of entrepreneurship and innovation. And lastly they play a key role in political and social stability. They often advocate for improvements in governance as well as social justice.</p>
<p>These households are not poor. But they aren’t secure financially. Their risk of falling into poverty is three times that of the established middle class, <a href="https://www.undp.org/sites/g/files/zskgke326/files/migration/za/UNDP---Socioeconomic-Impact-Assessment-Socioeconomic-Impact-Assessment-2020_FINAL_01-October-2020.pdf">according to a United Nations Development Programme report drawn up in 2020</a>. In terms of the South African municipal indigent policies, the aspirants are economically self-sufficient and could be classified as middle class.</p>
<p>However, the aspirants don’t earn enough to cover their bills and care for their households. Their desired economic, social and political life is the same as that of their middle class counterparts. </p>
<h2>Middle class factors</h2>
<p>Historically, education empowered individuals with skills and knowledge, enhancing their employability and earning potential. In South Africa, the quality of public education <a href="https://www.businesslive.co.za/fm/features/2023-05-25-south-africa-sinks-to-the-bottom-of-the-class/">has become questionable</a>. Our analysis confirmed that completion of secondary education was no longer enough to sustain progression to middle class status. </p>
<p>Racial inequality can affect access to opportunities, thus affecting social mobility. In South Africa, racial disparities continue to play a significant role. Black Africans have the lowest probability of ascending into the middle class. This is indicative of persistent income and educational inequalities rooted in the country’s history.</p>
<p>Historically, race was a key determinant of ownership of assets in South Africa. And assets such as owning a house provide a buffer against economic uncertainties, an essential element for sustaining middle-class status. </p>
<p>Access to economic opportunities, such as quality jobs and entrepreneurship, is crucial for upward mobility and a stable middle class. Our research found that entrepreneurship could help the aspirant middle class to diversify income sources, enhancing their financial resilience.</p>
<p>Finally, proximity to amenities like healthcare, education and transport is vital for a quality of life consistent with middle-class standards. The absence or deficiency of these amenities can hinder the progression of middle class aspirants and their creation of a secure status.</p>
<p>Proximity is valued because of the overall comfort and time-saving aspects for all household members and its economic benefits, such as reduced transport costs.</p>
<h2>What next</h2>
<p>The solutions to the problem of growing the middle class aren’t the same as those for poverty alleviation. That’s because each socioeconomic segment – middle class aspirants and the poor – faces idiosyncratic challenges.</p>
<p>We therefore propose hybrid policy frameworks that integrate pro-poor policies and those designed to sustain the middle class.</p>
<p>The government must also design policies aimed specifically at easing the progression of middle class aspirants into a stable middle class. This will enable the aspirants to drive demand for goods and services, invest further in education and healthcare, and foster a culture of entrepreneurship and innovation. They can also play a key role in political and social suitability by advocating for governance improvements and social justice.</p>
<p>Emphasising the role of local governments, the article calls for policies that maximise human potential, redress past imbalances, and ensure broad representation. This will facilitate the upward mobility of the aspirant middle class into a more stable and secure economic position.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/217391/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mary Mangai receives funding from National Research Foundation, German Research Foundation, US Federal Government, UP Research Development Programme FUND and VC Congress Travel Grant.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adrino Mazenda, Margaret Chitiga-Mabugu, and Tinashe Mushayanyama do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>South Africa needs policies that look after households that aren’t poor, but are also not financially secure.Tinashe Mushayanyama, Online Assistant Lecturer, University of South AfricaAdrino Mazenda, Senior Researcher, Associate Professor, University of PretoriaMargaret Chitiga-Mabugu, Dean of the Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences, University of PretoriaMary Mangai, Senior Lecturer, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2114782023-10-26T12:32:45Z2023-10-26T12:32:45ZI studied 1 million home sales in metro Atlanta and found that Black families are being squeezed out of homeownership by corporate investors<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554093/original/file-20231016-21-isn6c7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=40%2C32%2C5414%2C3026&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Corporate investors own nearly one-third of all single-family rental properties in Atlanta.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/atlanta-georgia-usa-downtown-skyline-aerial-royalty-free-image/1184733973">Kruck20/iStock via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the years since the Great Recession, when <a href="https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/great-recession-and-its-aftermath">housing prices dramatically fell</a>, Wall Street investors have been buying large numbers of single-family homes to use as rentals. As of 2022, big investment firms <a href="https://www.urban.org/research/publication/profile-institutional-investor-owned-single-family-rental-properties">owned nearly 600,000 such properties nationwide</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.huduser.gov/portal/periodicals/em/winter23/highlight1.html#title">Critics say</a> this practice drives up home prices and worsens the housing shortage, making it harder for families to afford to buy. Industry advocates <a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/congress-blog/3496390-providers-of-single-family-rental-homes-are-an-important-part-of-americas-housing-ecosystem/">dismiss such charges</a>, arguing that large investment firms own a tiny fraction of single-family rental housing across the U.S. – <a href="https://www.urban.org/research/publication/profile-institutional-investor-owned-single-family-rental-properties">less than 4%</a> of the total.</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=cxLejGQAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">professor of public policy at Georgia Tech</a>, I wanted to understand how this trend was affecting my neighbors. So I analyzed <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0739456X231176072">more than 1 million property sales</a> in the Atlanta metropolitan area from 2007 to 2016. Since the study period included the <a href="https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/subprime-mortgage-crisis">mortgage crisis</a>, I excluded bulk sales, such as the packages of
foreclosed homes, that aren’t available to typical homebuyers. I examined only <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/armslength.asp">arm’s-length transactions</a> of single-family detached homes, where buyers and sellers act independently. </p>
<p>I found that global investment firms buying up local properties are indeed hurting Atlanta families – specifically, Black ones. </p>
<h2>Neighborhood transformations</h2>
<p>In the period I studied, homeownership declined across the Atlanta metro area by <a href="https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/data/rates/tab6a_msa_05_2014_hmr.xlsx">more than 5 percentage points</a>, similar to a nationwide trend. For an average neighborhood, home purchasing by large corporate investors explained one-quarter of that decline. </p>
<p>But when I broke the analysis down by race, I found that Black families were hit much harder: Large investment firms buying up local properties explained fully three-quarters of the decline in African American homeownership. In contrast, non-Hispanic whites were largely unaffected. </p>
<p>It turns out that while Wall Street firms control just a sliver of the single-family rental market nationally, they can have much more influence at the local level. In the Atlanta metro area, these firms own nearly one-third of all single-family rental properties. They’re even more concentrated <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/interactive/2021/investors-rental-foreclosure">in predominantly Black neighborhoods</a>, where <a href="https://www.ajc.com/american-dream/investor-owned-houses-atlanta/">more than 10 houses in a row</a> can be owned by the same corporation.</p>
<p>In my study, I found that large investors tend to snap up housing in majority-nonwhite, lower-income suburban neighborhoods. This makes homebuying even more challenging for middle-class families of color, as they get <a href="https://www.huduser.gov/portal/periodicals/em/winter23/highlight1.html">pushed out of the bidding market</a> by global investors. </p>
<h2>Home is where the financial security is</h2>
<p>Homeownership has long been one of the main pathways for the American middle class to accumulate wealth. Despite this, the national homeownership rate declined <a href="https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RHORUSQ156N">by 5.5 percentage points</a> between 2007 and 2016, reaching a five-decade low of 62.9%. Although homeownership has rebounded somewhat since 2016, it remains below pre-2008 levels. </p>
<p>And who owns these homes is starkly divided by race. Between 2015 and 2019, more than 70% of white families owned a home, compared with <a href="https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/blog/nearly-every-state-people-color-are-less-likely-own-homes-compared-white-households">just 41% of Black families</a>, according to an analysis by Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. </p>
<p>To be sure, policies like <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/17/realestate/racism-home-deeds.html">racial covenants</a>, <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9781469663883/race-for-profit/">discriminatory mortgage lending practices</a> <a href="https://www.epi.org/publication/the-color-of-law-a-forgotten-history-of-how-our-government-segregated-america/">and redlining</a> fueled low homeownership rates for Black Americans long before the Great Recession. But global investors’ growing control of single-family homes only widens existing racial gaps in homeownership and wealth.</p>
<h2>Directions for new research</h2>
<p>While my study focused on Atlanta, it’s not the only place where residents are <a href="https://www.huduser.gov/portal/periodicals/em/winter23/highlight1.html">competing with global investors</a> for housing. Investment firms’ single-family rental portfolios are largely <a href="https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/2023-08/A%20Profile%20of%20Institutional%20Investor%E2%80%93Owned%20Single-Family%20Rental%20Properties.pdf">concentrated in Sun Belt metro areas</a>, including Phoenix, Charlotte and Jacksonville. It wouldn’t be surprising to see similar conflicts playing out in those cities. </p>
<p>Since my analysis stopped in 2016, I can’t be sure that Black Atlanta residents are still affected by Wall Street firms buying up housing. Many investment firms have recently been <a href="https://www.wsj.com/real-estate/americas-biggest-landlords-cant-find-houses-to-buy-either-ea893213">switching from a buy-to-rent</a> business model to a <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/building-and-renting-single-family-homes-is-top-performing-investment-11636453800">build-to-rent model</a>, which could complicate matters.</p>
<p>In the meantime, while <a href="https://www.banking.senate.gov/hearings/how-institutional-landlords-are-changing-the-housing-market">residents and policymakers have claimed</a> that large corporations don’t invest in local communities, researchers lack robust evidence this is the case. Academics should study whether properties owned by institutional landlords are more likely to be <a href="https://www.ajc.com/american-dream/investor-owned-houses-atlanta/">poorly maintained</a> or have <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/07/12/invitation-homes-corporate-landlord-permits/">code violations</a>, as anecdotal evidence suggests.</p>
<p>It’s also worth investigating whether big investment firms undermine local revenue collection by <a href="https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/business/article277638663.html">serially filing property tax appeals</a>. </p>
<h2>An open-source tool for housing policy research</h2>
<p>It’s been hard for researchers to identify corporate-owned, single-family homes, since it requires proprietary real-estate data and labor-intensive number crunching. In a separate project, my colleagues and I have developed a <a href="https://repository.gatech.edu/entities/publication/472788f9-a5e6-4d9b-8238-422d20333bcb">simple, user-friendly methodology</a> that gets around such challenges with the use of open-source software and public tax parcel data. </p>
<p>Local governments and nonprofits can use our methodology to unveil all the corporate-owned residential properties in any neighborhood and link them to outcomes such as code violations. Using data-driven approaches like this is an important step toward developing policy solutions.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/211478/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brian Y. An does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Black would-be homeowners pay the price when big investors buy up the neighborhood.Brian Y. An, Director of Master of Science in Public Policy Program & Assistant Professor of Public Policy, Georgia Institute of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2152692023-10-24T13:16:03Z2023-10-24T13:16:03ZThe thorny issue of ‘race’ in South African politics: why it endures almost 30 years after apartheid ended<p><a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/race-human">“Race”</a> continues to have much political salience in South Africa, a country where, in the past, perceived differences of skin colour were used to construct a <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">hierarchy of “races”</a>, with whites at the top, to justify their political economic domination. </p>
<p>The move to constitutional democracy in 1994 committed the country to <a href="https://www.justice.gov.za/legislation/constitution/saconstitution-web-eng.pdf#page=7">non-racialism</a>. However, almost three decades after the end of apartheid, politicians of different stripes continue to use “race” <a href="https://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/files/case-study-competition/20130322-The-Emergence-of-Racial-Politics-in-South-Africa.pdf">as a wedge issue</a> to mobilise support.</p>
<p>The question is why. Two answers stand out.</p>
<p>The first is that racial oppression has been entrenched by the country’s brutal history. The second is that the 1994 political settlement has failed to significantly improve the conditions of the mass of South Africans. </p>
<p>As a <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Roger-Southall">sociologist</a> and long-term observer of South African affairs, I suggest that these arguments are not easily dismissed, despite counter suggestions that life for most South Africans <a href="https://irr.org.za/reports/occasional-reports/files/life-in-south-africa-reasons-for-hope.pdf">has improved since 1994</a>. Both arguments suggest that, after nearly three decades, the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/question/How-did-apartheid-end">democracy of 1994</a> has become a form of neo-apartheid. Only a small black elite and middle class has been admitted to the old order of white economic prosperity and privilege while the majority of the population remains poor and black.</p>
<p>As long as this is the case, “race” will continue to have salience in the country’s politics, contrary to the non-racial consensus to which the <a href="https://www.justice.gov.za/legislation/constitution/saconstitution-web-eng.pdf">constitution</a> aspires.</p>
<h2>A fault of history</h2>
<p>The first argument says that “race”, as an explanatory feature of the continuing inequalities in South Africa, is hard-wired into the country’s politics by the long history of racial oppression. <a href="https://www.ufs.ac.za/docs/default-source/all-documents/biography-mr-moletsi-mbeki.pdf?sfvrsn=38b96d20_0">Moeletsi Mbeki</a>, a provocative commentator, <a href="https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/opinion/2020-09-21-moeletsi-mbeki-how-a-history-of-conflict-made-sa-the-most-unequal-country-in-the-world/">writes that</a> the country’s <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/south-africa-1900s-1900-1917#:%7E:text=Increased%20European%20encroachment%20ultimately%20led,South%20Africa%20by%20the%20Dutch.&text=The%20Cape%20Colony%20remained%20under,to%20British%20occupation%20in%201806.">conquest</a> by the Dutch and the British, and the reaction of its native peoples to their conquest, is the only context in which the issues of “race” and “race relations” are understandable.</p>
<p>Having decimated a prosperous African peasantry to produce a massive supply of cheap labour to the mines, the British enlisted a class of Afrikaner collaborators who managed the country between 1910 and 1994.</p>
<p>The implication is that even if South Africa’s politics officially subscribe to <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/42705231?typeAccessWorkflow=login">non-racialism</a>, the <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2020-02-27-the-business-of-unfinished-busines/">physical and psychological violence</a> inflicted upon the African majority cannot be wished away. It is easily exploited as a resource by unscrupulous politicians. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-south-africas-white-liberals-dodge-honest-debates-about-race-127846">How South Africa's white liberals dodge honest debates about race</a>
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<p>Some see elections as a <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1111/j.1468-2508.2006.00471.x?typeAccessWorkflow=login">“racial census”</a>, spurred on by a shift away from non-racialism within the ruling African National Congress (ANC), to prioritising black African interests. The ANC characterises its principal rival, the Democratic Alliance, as the <a href="https://ewn.co.za/2019/05/04/magashule-da-is-a-white-party-despite-black-faces-leading-it">political vehicle of white people</a>.</p>
<h2>Failure of the 1994 settlement</h2>
<p>The second argument about “race” is that the foundation of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-its-wrong-to-blame-south-africas-woes-on-mandelas-compromises-96062">1994 settlement </a> was built on the premise of a non-racial South Africa. But this has failed to significantly improve the conditions of the mass of South Africans.</p>
<p>In its most conspiratorial form, this presents <a href="https://theconversation.com/white-monopoly-capital-good-politics-bad-sociology-worse-economics-77338">“white monopoly capital”</a> as having concocted a deal with an incoming black political elite. This helps white people to <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/the-unfettered-power-of-white-monopoly-capital-8680007">maintain their economic dominance</a> over the black African majority.</p>
<p>More convincing are suggestions that the social democracy constructed in 1994 produced only a few winners. From this perspective, South Africa’s democracy was built on the simple proposition that the rising black elite and middle class could bargain and compromise with whomsoever it liked so long as each generation of black South Africans did better than the last.</p>
<p>For the first 15 years or so, this held. Although inequality remained vast, the bottom quarter of the population was enabled to rise through the <a href="https://www.gcis.gov.za/sites/default/files/docs/gcis/16.%20Social%20Development.pdf">expansion of a welfare state</a>. However, following the <a href="https://theconversation.com/inequality-troubling-trends-and-why-economic-growth-in-africa-is-key-to-reducing-global-disparities-215266">global crisis of 2008</a>, the <a href="http://www.saccps.org/pdf/5-1/5-1_DRMartin_DrSolomon_2.pdf">state capture era</a> under former president Jacob Zuma and <a href="https://theconversation.com/pandemic-underscores-gross-inequalities-in-south-africa-and-the-need-to-fix-them-135070">COVID</a>, this “foundational covenant” has been broken. </p>
<p>The lives of the younger generations are likely to become worse than those that preceded them. The <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africa-cant-crack-the-inequality-curse-why-and-what-can-be-done-213132">levels of inequality</a> are not only intolerably high, but racially skewed. As a result, South Africa has, according to academic and commentator <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/jonny-steinberg-1438581">Jonny Steinberg</a>, become </p>
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<p><a href="https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/opinion/2019-06-14-jonny-steinberg-the-centre-held-in-may-poll-thanks-to-fear-not-hope/">a perfect cocktail for populist mobilisation</a>.</p>
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<p>The liberal <a href="https://irr.org.za/reports/occasional-reports/reasons-for-hope-2019-unite-the-middle">Institute of Race Relations</a> has argued that South Africans are far more concerned about material improvement (more houses, more jobs, improved schools, and better services) than they are about “race” and that public perception is that <a href="https://irr.org.za/reports/occasional-reports/files/reasons-for-hope-report-final.pdf">“race relations” have improved since 1994</a>. </p>
<p>They may well be right, yet this rather misses the point that social change could well have been faster than it has been. As many black (and other) commentators <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-south-africa-should-undo-mandelas-economic-deals-52767">point out</a>, there is as much continuity with apartheid as there has been change. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/racism-in-south-africa-why-the-anc-has-failed-to-dismantle-patterns-of-white-privilege-187660">Racism in South Africa: why the ANC has failed to dismantle patterns of white privilege</a>
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<p>Not least the fact that <a href="https://theconversation.com/racism-in-south-africa-why-the-anc-has-failed-to-dismantle-patterns-of-white-privilege-187660">whites continue</a> to be disproportionately advantaged in terms of income, wealth, housing, and opportunity relative to other South Africans. Yet, there is an unwillingness among white people to recognise that to be white in South Africa continues to be a primary marker of socio-economic advantage.</p>
<p>A <a href="https://www.amazon.com/StayWoke-Africa-survive-Americas-culture/dp/B093RZJGSX">counter view</a> to this is that continuing inequalities are falsely ascribed to white racial privilege rather than to the broader political and economic dynamics of post-1994 South Africa. Central to such claims is that the non-racialism to which the 1994 settlement aspires has been perverted by the ANC’s policies of <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03056240701340365?casa_token=vcnLCrNvWCAAAAAA%3Aof20qYMBRBvHgmsttlZe12dgLK6HodItdYkRai6ZsnYDJaO-V-58gttAXFXsxQP12ldMa9P0QLg5a28">black economic empowerment</a> and <a href="https://www.labour.gov.za/DocumentCenter/Publications/Employment%20Equity/What%20employers%20and%20workers%20need%20to%20know%20about%20Employment%20Equity/EE%20pamphlet%20opt%20red.pdf">employment equity</a>.</p>
<p>Although those policies are officially pitched as levelling the playing fields to render society “demographically representative”, critics decry how they have become instruments for the dishing out of state contracts to those with connections to the ANC. </p>
<p>The debate continues with a remorseless circularity. </p>
<h2>White versus black fragility</h2>
<p>“Race” remains central to politics in South Africa and cannot simply be wished away, even if whites have conceded political power and <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv24tr7sh?typeAccessWorkflow=login">offer no major threat to democracy</a>. This does not suggest that white privilege has evaporated. Nor does it mean that there has been no significant change in racial dynamics since 1994. </p>
<p>We also need to understand the dynamics of class as much as those of “race” to understand why “race” remains so central to contemporary political debate.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/white-people-in-south-africa-still-hold-the-lions-share-of-all-forms-of-capital-75510">White people in South Africa still hold the lion's share of all forms of capital</a>
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<p>To state the obvious, whites have lost control of the state, enabling ANC policies such as <a href="https://www.gov.za/documents/broad-based-black-economic-empowerment-act">black economic empowerment</a> and the widening of access to higher education to promote upward mobility and the growth of the black middle class. Indeed, South Africa’s middle class is today <a href="https://jacana.co.za/product/the-new-black-middle-class-in-south-africa/">as much black as it is white</a>. This, even though the black middle class is on aggregate less well-off than the white middle class.</p>
<p>The critics of the political settlement of 1994 largely hail from the black middle class, even though it is the black middle class that has been one of the principal beneficiaries of South Africa’s social democracy. Despite their gains, it is they who are most likely to encounter what they perceive as “white privilege”, most notably in the workplace, as the primary obstacle to material advancement and upward social mobility.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/215269/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Roger Southall does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Critics of the 1994 political settlement largely hail from the black middle class, even though it has been one the principal beneficiaries of South Africa’s social democracy.Roger Southall, Professor of Sociology, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2100832023-08-07T13:59:23Z2023-08-07T13:59:23ZHow to build financial resilience: insurance and retirement savings are the most effective tools in South Africa – study<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540162/original/file-20230731-248519-drtf0d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Employment and education increase financial resilience.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Imagine you’ve found yourself in a difficult financial situation and needed to raise R40,000 (more than US$2,000) on the spot. Where and how would you raise these funds? Or what if a financial emergency has just taken a grip of your household? Which resources would you draw upon to address the problem?</p>
<p>If these scenarios ring true, you’re not alone. Many households are struggling to cope with unexpected financial expenses as interest rates and costs of living rise. With the global economy recovering from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, <a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/wdr2022/brief/chapter-1-introduction-the-economic-impacts-of-the-covid-19-crisis">developing countries</a> have been worse off. As many as <a href="https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/entities/publication/a40366b3-55db-51f2-95e6-14dffb1ce744">64% of households</a> reported a decrease in income. And South Africa was no exception.</p>
<p>A <a href="https://www2.deloitte.com/za/en/pages/consumer-industrial-products/articles/state-of-the-south-african-consumer.html">recent study</a> found that 61% of South Africans were financially stressed and struggled to meet their basic financial commitments due to a shortage of money. Further, close to 40% of respondents believed that their financial situation had worsened since 2022. </p>
<p>This points to a need for financial resilience.</p>
<p>Financial resilience is the ability to withstand and recover from financial shocks, such as an unexpected expense in a time of crisis. To understand the state of financial resilience, and the financial resources that build financial resilience, <a href="https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/IJBM-01-2023-0053/full/html?skipTracking=true">we studied</a> a nationally representative sample of 4,880 South African households across nine provinces.</p>
<p>We have been researching financial planning in South Africa and are interested in the gender dynamics in household savings. Our research found that women were, in general, more likely than men to be financially vulnerable. We also found that insurance and retirement savings were the most effective tools for increasing financial resilience.</p>
<h2>Measuring resilience</h2>
<p>We constructed an index to measure financial resilience. It was made up of the availability of savings, insurance, credit and retirement savings. Access to these instruments is a financial safety net that one can rely on in times of need. We considered access to both formal and informal sources of finance for savings, including banks, non-banks, informal savings clubs and savings at home. </p>
<p>We also included in our analysis credit from banks, non-banks, informal credit providers, and family or friends. Insurance encompassed both life and medical insurance. Finally, we examined retirement savings as contributions towards compulsory retirement funds (such as pension or provident funds) and/or voluntary retirement annuity funds.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/retired-women-in-south-africa-carry-a-huge-burden-of-poverty-177379">Retired women in South Africa carry a huge burden of poverty</a>
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<p><a href="https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/IJBM-01-2023-0053/full/html?skipTracking=true">Our research</a> also sought to examine the demographic and socioeconomic factors that could explain the differences in the levels of financial resilience between households.</p>
<h2>What we found</h2>
<p>Overall, we found low levels of financial resilience across the sample. Surprisingly, we found that insurance is the greatest contributor to building household financial resilience, followed by retirement provisions, savings and credit. However, we found that a gender gap in financial resilience exists, with men being more financially resilient than women. </p>
<p>We also found that the demographic and socioeconomic characteristics that are common between men and women also differentiate their resources levels in building financial resilience. In other words, some demographic groups have better access to financial products than others. For example, men between the ages of 45 and 59 have the highest levels of financial resilience compared to women across all age groups. Since men have <a href="https://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=14606">higher rates of labour market participation</a> and <a href="https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/2020/03/africa-gender-gap-access-to-finance-morsy">greater access to financial services</a>, they also accumulate more wealth and have greater financial security.</p>
<p>On the other hand, when race is considered, we found that black and white men were more financially resilient than their female counterparts. White women remained more financially resilient than black women. Black women need to contend with the double burden of race and gender to overcome financial vulnerability.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/91-of-sub-saharan-african-workers-dont-save-for-old-age-why-thats-a-problem-and-how-to-fix-it-204766">91% of sub-Saharan African workers don't save for old age: why that’s a problem and how to fix it</a>
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<p>We also observed a gender gap in financial resilience, in favour of men, across urban and rural areas (such as farming areas and traditional villages). Financial resilience was highest among people residing in urban areas. Households in rural or farming areas tend to be <a href="https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---ed_dialogue/---sector/documents/publication/wcms_437194.pdf#page=3">excluded from mainstream financial markets</a>, which makes it difficult to build financial resilience.</p>
<p>We found that access to economic and education opportunities increased financial resilience for women. Women with jobs and those with tertiary education were more financially resilient than their male counterparts. This reiterates the importance of women having independent access to income as it improves their economic bargaining power.</p>
<h2>How to improve resilience</h2>
<p>To improve the ability to withstand financial shocks, a few key interventions are necessary. </p>
<p>First, the uptake of life and medical insurance is strongly connected to financial resilience and can help South African households overcome an unexpected crisis. Further, policies aimed at building reserves in savings and enhancing access to credit facilities among vulnerable households can improve levels of financial resilience and economic security.</p>
<p>Since we also established that retirement provisions are a driver of financial resilience, premature access to retirement savings should be discouraged. Particularly if it’s consumption driven. The new two-pot <a href="https://www.liberty.co.za/media-insights/what-you-need-to-know-about-the-two-pot-retirement-saving-system#:%7E:text=In%20the%20new%20two%20pot,of%20withdrawing%20from%20these%20savings.">retirement saving system</a> – which proposes that a portion of retirement benefits can be withdrawn prematurely – may be helpful in the short term. But it could lead to financial vulnerability during one’s retirement years. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africa-needs-to-be-creative-to-avoid-falling-off-the-retirement-cliff-72825">South Africa needs to be creative to avoid falling off the retirement cliff</a>
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<p>Second, evidence of a gender gap in financial resilience calls for the design of gender-inclusive policies and interventions. More specifically in the access and use of financial services. Current practices of charging higher interest rates to those who are financially excluded typically disadvantages women as they have less access to financial services than men. Eliminating this policy can contribute towards improving access to financial products in a way that’s both gender-neutral and equitable. </p>
<p>In addition, racial and geographic location gaps in financial resilience are underpinned by gaps in access to financial services. This needs to be considered in national policies, such as the <a href="https://www.fsca.co.za/Documents/FSCA%20Financial%20Inclusion%20Strategy.pdf">financial inclusion strategy</a>, with clear targets set for closing such gaps. </p>
<p>Exposure to economic risks, whether anticipated or unexpected, is a reality we must all contend with. The ability to withstand and overcome these risks is a good indicator of financial resilience. Having adequate and equitable access to financial products and services remains the cornerstone of financial resilience.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210083/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Access to economic and education opportunities increases women’s ability to withstand and recover from financial shocks.Bomikazi Zeka, Assistant Professor in Finance and Financial Planning, University of CanberraAbdul Latif Alhassan, Associate Professor in Development Finance & Insurance, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1957182022-12-16T13:13:54Z2022-12-16T13:13:54Z1918 flu pandemic upended long-standing social inequalities – at least for a time, new study finds<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499388/original/file-20221206-16-lo9q7q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C220%2C3000%2C1742&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In this November 1918 photo, a nurse tends to a patient in the influenza ward of the Walter Reed hospital in Bethesda, Md. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/VirusOutbreak1918InfluenzaCOVID19/97d84472fcad44449444ae3b7cc5f539/photo?Query=1918%20flu&mediaType=photo&sortBy=&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=91&currentItemNo=29">AP Photo/Harris & Ewing via Library of Congress</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/research-brief-83231">Research Brief</a> is a short take about interesting academic work.</em> </p>
<h2>The big idea</h2>
<p>Racial disparities in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1215/00703370-10235825">influenza deaths shrunk by 74% in U.S. cities</a> during the <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1918-pandemic-h1n1.html">1918 flu pandemic</a> due to an odd coincidence of virus and history. That’s the key finding of our recently published study in the journal Demography. </p>
<p>This conclusion contradicts the <a href="https://tidsskriftet.no/2017/05/global-helse/social-inequality-forgotten-factor-pandemic-influenza-preparedness">common claim</a> that crises like pandemics <a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2020685118">make social inequalities worse</a>. The 1918 influenza pandemic was a surprising exception. </p>
<p>Prior to the 1918 pandemic, Black people in the U.S. died of respiratory diseases <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-019-00789-z">at vastly higher rates</a> than white people. But our study found that urban white people in their 20s and 30s were especially vulnerable to the 1918 virus, dying at rates that were up to 20 times higher than normal. While the death rates of Black people in urban settings also spiked during the 1918 pandemic, they did so by a much smaller rate than in white populations. On average, across all age groups, white mortality increased fivefold, while Black mortality increased threefold.</p>
<p>Overall, Black people <a href="https://doi.org/10.7326/M20-2223">still died at higher rates</a> than white people during the 1918 pandemic, but the ratio of Black-to-white mortality – a measure of racial inequality – <a href="https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16142487">shrank dramatically</a> compared with other time periods. So while 1918 was wildly deadly across the world, the death rate among urban white young adults in the U.S. was truly unprecedented.</p>
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<h2>Why it matters</h2>
<p>One anomalous feature of the pandemic is well known: It <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0069586">killed many young adults</a> alongside children and elderly people, who are traditionally at risk from flu viruses.</p>
<p>But the unusually small racial inequality in flu deaths in the U.S. in 1918 is a little-known puzzle that contrasts with modern pandemics <a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2205813119">like COVID-19</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2009.170241">and HIV</a>, which have hit Black communities especially hard. It also contrasts with a global tendency for <a href="https://doi.org/10.1186/s13643-018-0931-2">poorer populations to be more likely</a> to die from the flu.</p>
<p>Our study considered several hypotheses to explain the surprising patterns in the U.S. during the 1918 pandemic. One such potential explanation was that policies like school closures especially benefited Black populations because of their higher risk of dying from the flu in nonpandemic years when such measures were absent.</p>
<p>But only one explanation fits our evidence: Urban white young adults in the U.S. were deeply vulnerable in 1918 because of the way their immune systems had been programmed during childhood in the late 19th century. This is because the first flu people encounter as children is special: <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aag1322">It teaches the immune system</a> how to respond to future flu infections. However, research shows that this so-called immunological imprinting <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaut.2017.04.008">can be harmful</a> when the virus someone later encounters is very different from the virus their immune system has been trained against.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The 1918 flu pandemic killed at least 50 million people worldwide.</span></figcaption>
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<p>The last flu pandemic to hit U.S. cities before 1918 was a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1000886107">devastating global pandemic</a> that began in 1889. Exposure to that virus would have taught children’s immune systems to expect <a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1324197111">what was probably an H3N8 flu</a>. But the devastation in 1918 was caused by the world’s first H1N1 pandemic. The two strains belong to two different groups of influenza viruses, and immune protection from H3N8 would not have conferred protection against H1N1. </p>
<p>To the contrary: People whose first flu exposure occurred in the 1890s would have likely had a compromised immune response to the 1918 pandemic because their immune system produced the wrong kind of antibodies that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-23977-1">crowded out more effective ones</a>.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0069586">2013</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1324197111">2014</a> studies, two groups of virologists and demographers proposed and tested the hypothesis that 1890s imprinting explains the unusually high mortality of young adults during the 1918 pandemic. We adapted their argument to explain unusually small racial disparities as well. </p>
<p>This hypothesis suggests that the pattern of Black and white deaths in 1918 revolves around a historical coincidence. Black young adults were more often spared this fateful imprinting because they spent their childhoods in rural areas. As a result, though they often lived in deep poverty, they did not encounter some of the respiratory diseases that were rampant in cities. So while they were vulnerable to 1918’s novel flu, they were less so than people whose immune systems were primed to meet a virus like the one that circulated in the 1890s. </p>
<h2>What still isn’t known</h2>
<p>Immunologists are only beginning to understand the exact mechanisms through which imprinting affects long-term immune responses. Recent studies about the <a href="https://doi.org/10.3390/v11020122">early 20th century</a> and the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-23977-1">COVID-19 pandemic</a> support the idea that imprinting can significantly affect immune responses later in life. We all carry in our bodies the memories of our past disease exposures. </p>
<p>Those exposures <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-019-00789-z">changed radically</a> during the 20th century, and the full consequences for population immunity in the COVID-19 era remain to be unraveled.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/195718/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Elizabeth Wrigley-Field receives funding from the Minnesota Population Center, which is funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (grant number P2C HD041023).</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Martin Eiermann does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>During the 1918 flu pandemic, white people died at similar rates to Black Americans, according to a new study – a very different pattern than what occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic.Elizabeth Wrigley-Field, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of MinnesotaMartin Eiermann, Postdoctoral Fellow in Sociology, Duke UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1904862022-09-15T12:18:39Z2022-09-15T12:18:39ZUS is becoming a ‘developing country’ on global rankings that measure democracy, inequality<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/484375/original/file-20220913-4673-1pyfbw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C43%2C4785%2C2687&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">People wait in line for a free morning meal in Los Angeles in April 2020. High and rising inequality is one reason the U.S. ranks badly on some international measures of development.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/homeless-people-wait-in-line-for-a-morning-meal-at-the-fred-news-photo/1210677779?adppopup=true">Frederic J. Brown/ AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The United States may regard itself as a “<a href="https://www.americanforeignrelations.com/E-N/Exceptionalism-The-leader-of-the-free-world.html">leader of the free world</a>,” but an index of development released in July 2022 places the country much farther down the list. </p>
<p>In its global rankings, the United Nations Office of Sustainable Development dropped the U.S. to <a href="https://dashboards.sdgindex.org/rankings">41st worldwide</a>, down from its previous ranking of 32nd. Under this methodology – an expansive model of 17 categories, or “goals,” many of them focused on the environment and equity – the U.S. ranks between Cuba and Bulgaria. Both are widely regarded as developing countries.</p>
<p>The U.S. is also now considered a “flawed democracy,” according to <a href="https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2022/02/09/a-new-low-for-global-democracy">The Economist’s democracy index</a>.</p>
<p>As a political historian who studies U.S. <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/kathleen-frydl-0406b21a5/">institutional development</a>, I recognize these dismal ratings as the inevitable result of two problems. Racism has cheated many Americans out of the health care, education, economic security and environment they deserve. At the same time, as threats to democracy become more serious, a devotion to “American exceptionalism” keeps the country from candid appraisals and course corrections.</p>
<h2>‘The other America’</h2>
<p>The Office of Sustainable Development’s rankings differ from more traditional development measures in that they are more focused on the experiences of ordinary people, including their ability to enjoy clean air and water, than the creation of wealth. </p>
<p>So while the gigantic size of the American economy counts in its scoring, so too does unequal access to the wealth it produces. When judged by accepted measures like the <a href="https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.GINI?locations=US">Gini coefficient</a>, income inequality in the U.S. has risen markedly over the past 30 years. By the <a href="https://data.oecd.org/inequality/income-inequality.htm">Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s measurement</a>, the U.S. has the biggest wealth gap among G-7 nations.</p>
<p>These results reflect structural disparities in the United States, which are most pronounced for African Americans. Such differences have persisted well beyond the demise of chattel slavery and the repeal of Jim Crow laws.</p>
<p>Scholar W.E.B. Du Bois first exposed this kind of structural inequality in his 1899 analysis of Black life in the urban north, “<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt3fhpfb">The Philadelphia Negro</a>.” Though he noted distinctions of affluence and status within Black society, Du Bois found the lives of African Americans to be a world apart from white residents: a “city within a city.” Du Bois traced the high rates of poverty, crime and illiteracy prevalent in Philadelphia’s Black community to discrimination, divestment and residential segregation – not to Black people’s degree of ambition or talent.</p>
<p>More than a half-century later, with characteristic eloquence, Martin Luther King Jr. <a href="https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/the-other-america-speech-transcript-martin-luther-king-jr">similarly decried</a> the persistence of the “other America,” one where “the buoyancy of hope” was transformed into “the fatigue of despair.” </p>
<p>To illustrate his point, King referred to many of the same factors studied by Du Bois: the condition of housing and household wealth, education, social mobility and literacy rates, health outcomes and employment. On all of these metrics, <a href="https://theconversation.com/black-americans-mostly-left-behind-by-progress-since-dr-kings-death-89956">Black Americans fared worse</a> than whites. But as King noted, “Many people of various backgrounds live in this other America.”</p>
<p>The benchmarks of development invoked by these men also featured prominently in the 1962 book “<a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Other-America/Michael-Harrington/9780684826783">The Other America</a>,” by political scientist <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-socialism-stopped-being-a-dirty-word-for-some-voters-and-started-winning-elections-across-america-156572">Michael Harrington, founder</a> of a group that eventually became the Democratic Socialists of America. Harrington’s work so unsettled President John F. Kennedy that it reportedly <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-a-new-yorker-article-launched-the-first-shot-in-the-war-against-poverty-17469990/">galvanized him</a> into formulating a “war on poverty.” </p>
<p>Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon Johnson, waged this metaphorical war. But poverty <a href="https://www.cbpp.org/poverty-and-place">bound to discrete places</a>. Rural areas and segregated neighborhoods stayed poor well beyond mid-20th-century federal efforts.</p>
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<img alt="Tents line a leafy park; some people can be seen chatting outside one tent" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/484374/original/file-20220913-4701-2mulzv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=6%2C19%2C4275%2C2824&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/484374/original/file-20220913-4701-2mulzv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484374/original/file-20220913-4701-2mulzv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484374/original/file-20220913-4701-2mulzv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484374/original/file-20220913-4701-2mulzv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484374/original/file-20220913-4701-2mulzv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484374/original/file-20220913-4701-2mulzv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Camp Laykay Nou, a homeless encampment in Philadelphia. High and rising inequality is one reason the US rates badly on some international development rankings.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/camp-laykay-nou-celebrated-a-stay-in-the-city-of-news-photo/1227676000?adppopup=true">Cory Clark/NurPhoto via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>In large part that is because federal efforts during that critical time accommodated rather than confronted the forces of racism, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/history/american-history-after-1945/gi-bill?format=HB&isbn=9780521514248">according to my research</a>. </p>
<p>Across a number of policy domains, the sustained efforts of segregationist Democrats in Congress resulted in an incomplete and patchwork system of social policy. Democrats from the South cooperated with Republicans to doom to failure efforts to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/universal-health-care-racism.html">achieve universal</a> <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/06/the-fight-for-health-care-is-really-all-about-civil-rights/531855/">health care</a> or <a href="https://www.salon.com/2018/06/07/big-business-and-white-supremacy-the-racist-roots-of-americas-right-to-work-laws/">unionized workforces</a>. Rejecting proposals for strong federal intervention, they left a checkered legacy of <a href="https://www.sc.edu/uofsc/posts/2022/04/conversation-jim-crow.php#.YyHMrOzMK8p">local funding for education</a> and <a href="https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/10.1377/hlthaff.2021.01466">public health</a>. </p>
<p>Today, many years later, the effects of a welfare state tailored to racism is evident — though perhaps less visibly so — in the inadequate <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanam/article/PIIS2667-193X(22)00081-3/fulltext">health policies</a> driving a <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/2022/20220831.htm">shocking decline</a> in average American life expectancy.</p>
<h2>Declining democracy</h2>
<p>There are other ways to measure a country’s level of development, and on some of them the U.S. fares better. </p>
<p>The U.S. currently ranks 21st on <a href="https://hdr.undp.org/">the United Nations Development Program’s index</a>, which measures fewer factors than the sustainable development index. Good results in average income per person – $64,765 – and an average 13.7 years of schooling situate the United States squarely in the developed world.</p>
<p>Its ranking suffers, however, on appraisals that place greater weight on political systems. </p>
<p>The Economist’s <a href="https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2022/02/09/a-new-low-for-global-democracy">democracy index</a> now groups the U.S. among “flawed democracies,” with an overall score that ranks between Estonia and Chile. It falls short of being a top-rated “full democracy” in large part because of a fractured political culture. This growing divide is most apparent in the divergent paths between “red” and “blue” states.</p>
<p>Although the analysts from The Economist applaud the peaceful transfer of power in the face of an <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-sore-loser-effect-rejecting-election-results-can-destabilize-democracy-and-drive-terrorism-171571">insurrection intended to disrupt</a> it, <a href="https://www.eiu.com/n/campaigns/democracy-index-2021/?utm_source=economist&utm_medium=daily_chart&utm_campaign=democracy-index-2021">their report laments</a> that, according to a January 2022 poll, “only 55% of Americans believe that Mr. Biden legitimately won the 2020 election, despite no evidence of widespread voter fraud.”</p>
<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/05/us/politics/america-first-secretary-of-state-candidates.html">Election denialism carries with it the threat</a> that election officials in Republican-controlled jurisdictions will reject or alter vote tallies that do not favor the Republican Party in upcoming elections, further jeopardizing the score of the U.S. on the democracy index. </p>
<p>Red and blue America also differ on access to modern reproductive care for women. This hurts the U.S. gender equality rating, <a href="https://www.guttmacher.org/gpr/2015/10/onward-2030-sexual-and-reproductive-health-and-rights-context-sustainable-development">one aspect</a> of the United Nations’ sustainable development index.</p>
<p>Since the <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/06/24/1102305878/supreme-court-abortion-roe-v-wade-decision-overturn">Supreme Court overturned</a> Roe v. Wade, Republican-controlled states have enacted or proposed grossly <a href="https://today.westlaw.com/Document/I1ebf6cf01a6a11ed9f24ec7b211d8087/View/FullText.html%22%22">restrictive</a> <a href="https://www.guttmacher.org/state-policy">abortion laws</a>, to the point of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/10/us/abortion-bans-medical-care-women.html">endangering a woman’s health</a>. </p>
<p>I believe that, when paired with structural inequalities and fractured social policy, the dwindling Republican commitment to democracy lends weight to the classification of the U.S. as a developing country.</p>
<h2>American exceptionalism</h2>
<p>To address the poor showing of the United States on a variety of global surveys, one must also contend with the idea of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2015/06/03/obama-and-american-exceptionalism/">American exceptionalism</a>, a belief in American superiority over the rest of the world. </p>
<p>Both political parties have long promoted this belief, at home and abroad, but “exceptionalism” receives a more formal treatment from Republicans. It was the first line of the Republican Party’s national platform of <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwiukdmw2pT6AhU6FVkFHRpPDLUQFnoECAsQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fprod-cdn-static.gop.com%2Fmedia%2Fdocuments%2FDRAFT_12_FINAL%255B1%255D-ben_1468872234.pdf&usg=AOvVaw0ZlBtj2Rrovr9mA9DZJCOy">2016</a> and <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/The_Republican_Party_Platform,_2020">2020</a> (“we believe in American exceptionalism”). And it served as the organizing principle behind Donald Trump’s vow to restore “<a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/31/trump-patriotic-education-406521">patriotic education</a>” to America’s schools. </p>
<p>In Florida, after <a href="https://www.orlandoweekly.com/news/florida-board-of-education-approves-new-curriculum-touting-american-exceptionalism-29639851">lobbying by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis</a>, the state board of education in July 2022 approved standards rooted in American exceptionalism while barring instruction in <a href="https://www.edweek.org/leadership/what-is-critical-race-theory-and-why-is-it-under-attack/2021/05">critical race theory</a>, an academic framework teaching the kind of structural racism Du Bois exposed long ago.</p>
<p>With a tendency to proclaim excellence rather than pursue it, the peddling of American exceptionalism encourages Americans to maintain a robust sense of national achievement – despite mounting evidence to the contrary.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/190486/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kathleen Frydl does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The United States came in 41st worldwide on the UN’s 2022 sustainable development index, down nine spots from last year. A political historian explains the country’s dismal scores.Kathleen Frydl, Sachs Lecturer, Johns Hopkins UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1843302022-06-21T14:13:42Z2022-06-21T14:13:42ZVigilantism in South Africa carries historical imprints of past violence against black people<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468192/original/file-20220610-16526-yq91k6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Family members wash away blood at the scene of a shooting in Khayelitsha, Cape Town, where seven people were shot dead in May.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Brenton Geach/Gallo Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>South Africa’s history of discrimination, racial segregation and extralegal violence has influenced patterns of violence today. Colonial and apartheid governments ruled through violence and <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/making-of-south-african-legal-culture-19021936/A0C663AB1DD7AACE9D9E553DB4180992">racial oppression</a>. Whether through torture, corporal punishment or killings, black lives were deemed infinitely expendable.</p>
<p>“Natives” were subjected to summary “justice” by mining companies, chiefs, native commissioners, and other administrative officials – who could all lawfully mete out unappealable, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/making-of-south-african-legal-culture-19021936/A0C663AB1DD7AACE9D9E553DB4180992">on the spot punishments</a>. Extralegal (unlawful) violence by the police, white farmers and vigilantes, among others, was also tolerated. </p>
<p>On top of this <a href="https://overcomingapartheid.msu.edu/multimedia.php?kid=163-582-18#:%7E:text=From%201960%20to%201983%2C%20the,economic%20reasons%20for%20these%20removals.">forced relocations</a>, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/land-dispossession-history-1600s-1990s">dispossession</a>, and spatially <a href="https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences/applied-and-social-sciences-magazines/townships">segregated black townships</a> and <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/homelands">bantustans</a> – rural, impoverished areas established for the purpose of permanently removing black people from urban South Africa – resulted in multiple forms of violent dispute settlement. This is <a href="https://theconversation.com/rising-vigilantism-south-africa-is-reaping-the-fruits-of-misrule-179891">still apparent today</a>. </p>
<p>South Africa remains a deeply violent society.</p>
<p>In a recent <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/14624745221079456">study</a> I explored the phenomena of vigilante kidnappings and unlawful confinements in informal settlements and former <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/43622104?seq=1">black townships</a>. </p>
<p>I argue that car trunks, shacks, shipping containers, and other commonplace receptacles function as the underbelly of official institutions, such as prisons and police lock-ups. My findings serve as important reminders about the uneasy relationship between local meanings of “justice” and the criminal “justice” system.</p>
<h2>Vigilantism</h2>
<p>For my <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/14624745221079456">study</a> I analysed thousands of Excel spreadsheets shared with me by the South African Police Service. I focused on violent crimes (arson, serious assault, attempted murder, malicious damage to property, kidnapping, public violence, and murder) in the Khayelitsha and Nyanga policing clusters for the period 2000 – 2016. I analysed data from the Khayelitsha, Lingelethu-West, Harare, Nyanga, Gugulethu, and Philippi East police stations. </p>
<p>At the time of my research, these stations, in the historically poor black of townships Khayelitsha and Nyanga in Cape Town, had among the highest recorded rates of violent crime in the Western Cape (if not the country). They are notorious for incidents of <a href="https://www.westerncape.gov.za/files/wccs_crime_report_2020-03-25_medres.pdf">lethal vigilante violence</a>.</p>
<p>There is no definition of vigilantism in South African law. So, police often use words other than “vigilantism” in vigilante-related cases. I started with an automated search using using 48 search terms. Then I read through the “comments” columns of the spreadsheets to determine whether cases involved the unlawful punishment, prevention, or investigation of crime. I labelled these as instances of vigilante violence. I also looked at court cases and secondary historical research.</p>
<p>My <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/14624745221079456">findings</a> reflect stark differences in how residents in poor black areas, and in the more affluent former white areas, deal with crime. In middle class, formerly “whites only” areas, residents use security guards, fortified fences, insurance policies, and better access to the police, among other resources. </p>
<p>But in mainly black townships and informal settlements, everyday infrastructures and objects are used to impose a certain order. Pieces of wire are temporarily transformed into handcuffs, open spaces and community halls into courtrooms, beaches into spaces of death and torture.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/rising-vigilantism-south-africa-is-reaping-the-fruits-of-misrule-179891">Rising vigilantism: South Africa is reaping the fruits of misrule</a>
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<p>Vigilantes would sometimes force someone into the trunk of a vehicle and drive around to locate stolen property (officially recorded as kidnapping or “manstealing”). Garages, shacks, old shipping containers, and public spaces (including community halls) doubled up as sites for the detention, assault, torture, and extrajudicial punishment of suspected criminals.</p>
<p>I found multiple instances of minibus taxis functioning as quasi-police vehicles. Taxi drivers tracked down stolen goods and collected evidence for their clients, who often paid for these services. I also found less organised instances where smaller private cars were used for finding stolen goods. </p>
<p>Sometimes people are driven to <a href="https://www.capetown.gov.za/Family%20and%20home/see-all-city-facilities/our-recreational-facilities/Beaches/Monwabisi%20Beach">Monwabisi Beach</a>, which forms Khayelitsha’s western border. When people are forcibly taken there at night, it is transformed from a space of beauty and leisure into one of violence and death.</p>
<p>The common garden shed is used to store tools and gardening equipment in middle class suburbs. Security guards, on the perimeters of luxury properties, also use them. In South Africa’s marginalised spaces garden sheds (<em>ityotyombe</em>) are the more expensive version of corrugated iron shacks (<em>ihoki</em>). People who cannot access formal housing live in them, often with multiple other people.</p>
<p>They also double up as spaces of incarceration, punishment and torture.</p>
<p>The phenomena I studied are not mere forms of gratuitous violence. Instead they mimic and distort the way that the state, and the affluent middle classes, target the racialised poor in pursuit of <a href="https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=30559">“crime control”</a>. They also mimic the violence of organised crime. </p>
<h2>Porous boundaries</h2>
<p>My findings highlight the porous boundaries between different forms of violence: between torture and extrajudicial punishment; between lawful arrest and unlawful kidnapping; between gang, vigilante, and police violence; and between judicial and extrajudicial punishment. </p>
<p>Vigilantes adopt similar tactics to the police in the arrest, detention, investigation, and extrajudicial punishment of crime suspects. Sometimes, they drop suspects off outside police stations. Thus, after roughing them up, they demand further punishment from the state. <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00020189008707718">Taxi owners</a> have an ambiguous relationship with the state. This is particularly so when they <a href="https://www.news24.com/witness/news/durban/watch-taxi-operators-fire-shots-in-the-air-to-disperse-looters-in-hammarsdale-kzn-20220610">assist in maintaining order</a>, <a href="https://www.westerncape.gov.za/police-ombudsman/files/atoms/files/khayelitsha_commission_report_0.pdf">albeit violently</a>. There is historic precedent for state tolerance (or encouragement) of <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1362480617724830">vigilante violence</a>. </p>
<p>When police <a href="https://viewfinder.org.za/massive-database-of-killings-by-police-made-public/">use excessive force</a>, <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/sundayindependent/news/big-payouts-little-sanction-in-saps-wrongful-arrest-cases-09b45ef6-df6c-44bb-a5f0-360a92a7450e">arrest arbitrarily</a>, or when an initially lawful arrest (by police or civilians) <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/lasr.12198">morphs into extrajudicial punishment</a>, the line between lawful and unlawful violence collapses. </p>
<p>This shows that the boundaries between violence and the law are porous, and not as distinct as they at first glance seem to be.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/184330/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gail Super receives funding from Social Sciences and Humanities
Research Council of Canada, (grant number 505131)</span></em></p>The study highlights the flimsy boundaries between different forms of violence: torture and extrajudicial punishment, lawful arrest, and an unlawful kidnapping.Gail Super, Assistant Professor, University of TorontoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1826452022-05-27T12:29:48Z2022-05-27T12:29:48ZDesegregating schools requires more than giving parents free choices – a scholar studies the choices parents of all races make<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462572/original/file-20220511-11-l02abw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=19%2C3%2C2121%2C1400&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Racial bias may play a role both in the schools that families choose for their children and the experiences their children have.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/child-dressed-in-red-walking-across-red-and-blue-royalty-free-image/1083675448">Klaus Vedfelt/DigitalVision via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em><a href="https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/sociology/faculty/ch48723">Chantal Hailey</a> is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Austin College of Liberal Arts.Her work focuses on the role of race and racism in how people choose schools and the other spaces they inhabit, and how racism influences inequality. Below are highlights from an interview with The Conversation. Answers have been edited for brevity and clarity.</em></p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Chantal Hailey discusses her research about how race and racism influence school choice.</span></figcaption>
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<p><strong>What do you study?</strong></p>
<p>My research at this moment focuses on <a href="https://integratedschools.org/podcast/s7e14-unpacking-the-racial-hierarchy-in-school-choices/">school choice</a> in New York City, and particularly the role of race in how people choose high schools in New York City. This is important for a couple of reasons. One, New York City is the largest school district in the United States. Over a million kids attend school in this school district. </p>
<p>And in 2014, there was a <a href="https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5cx4b8pf">study</a> that came out that was completely surprising to me as someone who was new to New York City. It said that New York state’s schools were the most segregated in the country. And that was surprising for two reasons. One, we often think of New York and particularly New York City as this really racially diverse metropolitan area.</p>
<p>The other reason this is surprising is that, for high school in particular, there is school choice, which means students can choose to attend school anywhere across the city. A lot of the reasons we think about or talk about school segregation is that it’s tied to racially segregated housing and neighborhoods.</p>
<p>But in New York City, those two ties are broken up. People can technically choose to attend school anywhere across the city. But yet you still see these really stark patterns of segregation. </p>
<p>I ask in my work, why do we still see racial sorting patterns across schools and really stark racial segregation? I use both data from families’ actual applications to high schools and an experiment to understand why we see segregation in New York City schools.</p>
<p><strong>What’s one thing you want people to take away from your research?</strong></p>
<p>Even though we might think of school choice as a race-neutral policy, the ways in which families interact with school choice policies are very racialized. By that, I mean a couple of things: One, that means <a href="https://chantalahailey.com/working-papers/">families interpret information</a> about schools through what I call their racial prisms – that is, their racial biases toward groups, general cultural stereotypes around groups, other experiences and exposures to different racial groups.</p>
<p>So families are interpreting information about schools through race. They also have racial preferences for schools.</p>
<p>In the experiment and in the administrative data, I examine schools that are the exact same but differ only by their racial demographics. And <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/00380407211065179">what I find</a> is that families across different racial groups express racial preferences for schools. So in particular, I find that white and Asian families have had really stark desires to avoid Black and Latino spaces.</p>
<p>I find that Latino families also want to avoid majority Black schools, and I find that Black families often desire not to to attend majority-white schools. So again, I really want to emphasize that even though we might think of school choice as race neutral or even a racial equity policy, the ways in which people are interacting with that policy are <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/08959048221087211">very racialized </a>and based upon their own experiences and exposures and cultural stereotypes in our larger structure of racism.</p>
<p><strong>What inspired you to study the field that you’re in right now?</strong></p>
<p>My own schooling experiences. I experienced many different kinds of racialized school spaces, from a majority-Black elementary school to racially mixed middle schools to a private, all-girls majority-white school. Across all those spaces, I saw different resources that were available. I saw different racialized treatment of students across these different spaces. </p>
<p>I knew that race was central in both how I experienced those spaces and in my decisions and my mom’s decisions to move me across these spaces. So I wanted to understand the patterns of race and school choice from a larger context and how it influences students’ racialized outcomes and their experiences within school spaces.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/182645/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chantal Hailey receives funding from the Population Research Center, awarded to the Population Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (P2CHD042849), the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program under Grant No. DGE1342536, the Institute of Education Sciences–funded Predoctoral Interdisciplinary Research Training (IES-PIRT) Program at New York University, and the Ford Foundation Dissertation Grant.</span></em></p>Inspired by her own experience with the education system, a professor of sociology explores how race and racism influence school choice and education.Chantal Hailey, Assistant Professor of Sociology, The University of Texas at AustinLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1797902022-04-18T13:06:04Z2022-04-18T13:06:04ZAs COVID hit Kenya and South Africa, race and class fears were amplified on Twitter<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/456623/original/file-20220406-14518-uyhirt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Image by da-kuk/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s common in both Kenya and South Africa for there to be everyday conversations about inequalities in power relations and between “races”, classes and ethnic groups. Kenya, in East Africa, and South Africa, in southern Africa, share a history of British colonial divisions. In both countries, social movements and protest have sought to address these social injustices – like <a href="https://theconversation.com/feesmustfall-the-poster-child-for-new-forms-of-struggle-in-south-africa-68773">#FeesMustFall</a>, <a href="https://www.okayafrica.com/real-story-behind-menaretrash-south-africas-viral-hashtag/">#MenAreTrash</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/SabasabaMarchForOurLives?src=hash">#SabaSabaMarchForOurLives</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23OccupyParliamentKE&src=typed_query">#OccupyParliamentKE</a>.</p>
<p>Socio-economic and political divides were further exacerbated by the global COVID-19 pandemic and the responses of the Kenyan and South African governments. As countries went into lockdowns, citizens used social media platforms to voice their concerns. </p>
<p>During the first weeks of COVID-19 cases reported in Kenya and South Africa, there were hundreds of thousands of tweets posted by distressed citizens. Our study of these tweets was undertaken in order to see what kind of conversations were happening – and if they reinforced postcolonial social inequalities in the countries. </p>
<p>Over 129,541 tweets were collected from Kenya and 237,528 from South Africa between 5 March and 31 March 2020 using <a href="https://tags.hawksey.info">Twitter Archiving Google Sheet</a> (TAGS). The tweets, from ordinary citizens, were then grouped into themes and the major themes were used to produce a research report.</p>
<p>Our <a href="https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/intellect/jams/2022/00000014/00000001/art00003">study</a> revealed several issues raised. These were divided into four themes: racialised politics, classism, privilege and panic buying, and ethnicity and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2017/nov/08/us-vs-them-the-sinister-techniques-of-othering-and-how-to-avoid-them">‘othering’</a> (or prejudice against certain groups). These themes, outlined below, echoed issues of discrimination that have characterised postcolonial states. </p>
<p>In short, we found that the first recorded cases of COVID-19 in South Africa and Kenya in March 2020 spawned a maelstrom of tweets reflecting fears and anxieties about the virus, as well as other deeply rooted prejudices. The rage towards white communities and the powerful and privileged class can be read as fatigue with the existing postcolonial issues.</p>
<h2>Racialised politics</h2>
<p>Power and the racialised politics of the pandemic dominated the Twitter conversations in both countries. At the beginning of 2020, media reports had indicated that black communities in the US were <a href="https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m1483.full">hardest hit</a> by the pandemic due to continued institutionalised discrimination. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/social-media-users-in-kenya-and-south-africa-trust-science-but-still-share-covid-19-hoaxes-157894">Social media users in Kenya and South Africa trust science, but still share COVID-19 hoaxes</a>
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<p>The first cases of COVID were reported on 5 March and 13 March 2020 in South Africa and Kenya, respectively. These first reports indicated the virus had been brought into both countries by “privileged” citizens. </p>
<p>The first case of COVID in South Africa was a white South African from KwaZulu-Natal province, who had travelled back from Europe. In Kenya, 239 passengers who had arrived from China were blamed for bringing in COVID. This resulted in a strong resentment in South Africa towards the white communities, and a resentment towards the Chinese in Kenya. </p>
<p>Racial conversations worsened when some Kenyans and South Africans regarded COVID-19 as a foreign disease. As one South African tweet stated:</p>
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<p>Imagine dying from an overseas disease when you don’t even own a passport, let alone being in a plane or ship, except for a relationship. Watseba these travellers di na le mahlale (You know, these travellers are silly) #COVID19SouthAfrica</p>
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<p>And another, in Kenya:</p>
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<p>We can confidently report that part of China mega loans agreement (initially negotiated by Raila as PM) was to allow illegal infiltration of Chinese into KE (Kenya), that’s why these despots continue to allow coronavirus infected Chinese to enter KE. #UhuruKenyatta #coronavirusInkenya"</p>
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<h2>Classism, privilege and panic buying</h2>
<p>When the World Health Organization (WHO) <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7569573/">declared COVID-19 a pandemic</a> on 11 March 2020, it led to drastic changes in public and social life. These were accompanied by perceived and sometimes real shortages of resources. There were <a href="https://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/tea/news/east-africa/coronavirus-panic-buying-leads-to-empty-shelves-in-nairobi-1438590">reported cases</a> of long queues in the stores with individuals <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2020-03-19-sa-shoppers-no-need-to-stockpile/">stockpiling</a> essential goods. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-dimensions-of-human-inequality-affect-who-and-what-we-are-137296">How the dimensions of human inequality affect who and what we are</a>
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<p>Class issues dominated the conversations on <a href="https://theconversation.com/panic-buying-in-the-wake-of-covid-19-underscores-inequalities-in-south-africa-134172">panic buying</a> in both Kenya and South Africa. While privileged white communities in South Africa were accused of participating in panic buying, Kenyan tweeters regarded those who participated in panic buying as a selfish and ignorant middle class: </p>
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<p>The only people who have panicked and started panic buying of goods are the wannabe middle class. The rest of us live on FAITH. One day at a time #StayHome #lockdown #COVID19KE</p>
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<p>Those who could panic buy had the resources to do so. Those who could not afford to, as Twitter users noted, could only panic:</p>
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<p>To the selfish assholes black and white. Stop hoarding stock on retail shops, just because you can afford to purchase 15 loaves of bread doesn’t mean the rest of us don’t want to eat. You have clearly demonstrated if there was a deadly epidemic, you’d do the same #COVID19SouthAfrica</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Ethnicity and othering</h2>
<p>Propagation of ‘othering’ in Twitter conversations was also noticed in both South Africa and Kenya. Apart from the resentment towards white and Chinese communities, <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-kenya-could-move-away-from-the-politics-of-ethnicity-77980">ethnic stereotyping</a> was evident in online conversations. These were linked to the ability to survive the pandemic due to behaviours associated with certain ethnic stereotypes. Ethnic stereotypes and prejudices are divisive and generally show an unfavourable attitude towards certain groups. As one Kenyan Twitter user put it:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>BREAKING NEWS! We need 2 Kikuyu’s to go to China waibe dawa ya coronavirus, 2 Kalenjins watoroke nayo mbio, 2 luos warushe mawe in case kuharibike, 2 maasai waruke nayo border, 2 kamba and 3 kisii for supernatural powers for protection and 2 Luyhas wakule evidence #covid19kenya’ </p>
<p>(We need two individuals from the Kikuyu community to go and steal medicine from China, two from the Kalenjin communities to run with it, two from the Maasai community to cross the border with it, two from Kamba and Kisii communities to use their supernatural powers for protection and two from the Luhya community to eat the evidence afterwards)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And a South African tweet read:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Worry yam is watching all those rich South Africans (majority white) who bought more than they needed throw these away once the outbreak is brought under control on the back of many preventable deaths. #COVID19SouthAfrica"</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>The colonial lives on in the postcolonial</h2>
<p>These Twitter conversations in the first few weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic in Kenya and South Africa reveal a range of unique experiences and biases shaped by postcolonial legacies of power. They represent ongoing racial and ethnic issues that are highly contested and deep-seated in the historical antecedents of both countries.</p>
<p>In building a post-COVID society, government policies must systematically address these postcolonial issues and legacies of power and racial and ethnic identity in order to shape a society that is responsive to the needs of all its citizens.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/179790/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Job Mwaura is affiliated with the University of Cape Town. He receives funding from the Open Society Foundation. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ufuoma Akpojivi receives funding from the National Research Foundation, NRF. </span></em></p>Online rage towards white communities and privileged classes can be read as fatigue with the postcolonial state.Job Mwaura, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Cape TownUfuoma Akpojivi, Associate Professor in Media Studies, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1683682022-02-07T02:17:08Z2022-02-07T02:17:08ZWhose sovereignty is really being fought for? What happens when First Nations People are dragged into extremist protests<p>Over the past few weeks we have seen First Nations people protesting alongside <a href="https://www.sydneycriminallawyers.com.au/blog/far-right-provocateurs-have-descended-upon-old-parliament-house/">alt-right “freedom” protesters</a> at Old Parliament House in Canberra.</p>
<p>With this we saw a classic example of the alt-right trying to recruit disaffected marginalised people for their <a href="https://theconversation.com/who-are-the-original-sovereigns-who-were-camped-out-at-old-parliament-house-and-what-are-their-aims-174694">own ends</a>.</p>
<p>This is not only dangerous given what we know about the history of First Nations peoples’ interactions with police, it also perpetuates a stereotype of First Nations people that we are dysfunctional, disunited and do not know what we want.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-short-history-of-the-aboriginal-tent-embassy-an-indelible-reminder-of-unceded-sovereignty-174693">A short history of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy – an indelible reminder of unceded sovereignty</a>
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<h2>White supremacy and the Aboriginal Tent Embassy</h2>
<p>The Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra was established in 1972. The Embassy is a permanent, heritage-listed protest site representing the political rights of the Indigenous Peoples of Australia. It is the longest living Indigenous protest site in the world. </p>
<p>However, in recent months a clash of <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/blackfishing-alt-right-pushes-to-co-opt-aboriginal-tent-embassy-to-cause-20220105-p59lzj.html">extremist white protesters</a> alongside some <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/tent-embassy-a-potent-celebration-of-aboriginal-protest-20220124-p59qpx.html">Indigenous people</a>, attempted a hostile invasion of the site in a bid to co-opt the Embassy’s cause. The group that descended the area included key white supremacist figures, including members of the <a href="https://www.sydneycriminallawyers.com.au/blog/far-right-provocateurs-have-descended-upon-old-parliament-house/">Proud Boys</a>.</p>
<p>These alt-right, extremist invaders are aligned with the global Sovereign Citizens (SovCits) movement, whose roots are <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-5365431">racist and antisemitic</a>. Sovereign Citizens are <a href="https://theconversation.com/living-people-who-are-the-sovereign-citizens-or-sovcits-and-why-do-they-believe-they-have-immunity-from-the-law-143438">anti-government</a> and believe they are sovereign from the laws of the country where they live.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1479558786629226498"}"></div></p>
<p>These extremists misappropriated the <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/blackfishing-alt-right-pushes-to-co-opt-aboriginal-tent-embassy-to-cause-20220105-p59lzj.html">long-term struggle</a> of First Nations people, and created chaos and division. </p>
<p>It seems these groups find ways to recruit others by tapping into the distrust of authority. They potentially exploited this to recruit Indigenous people to an alt-right cause.</p>
<p>The presence of Indigenous people in these protests further perpetuates the narrative we are dysfunctional peoples who cannot agree - a stereotype white people as a collective do not have to worry about. </p>
<p>Indigenous people being perceived as dysfunctional springs from white deficit narratives about Indigenous communities. <a href="https://www.lowitja.org.au/content/Document/Lowitja-Publishing/deficit-discourse.pdf">This deficit discourse</a> represents our people in terms of incivility, discord and failure.</p>
<h2>So whose sovereignty is <em>really</em> being fought for?</h2>
<p>Sovereignty is one of the foundational principles of international law. Unfortunately, sovereignty under traditional Western Euro-centric international law was purposefully designed and restricted to what are considered <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1177180121994681">“civilised”</a> nations and Indigenous Peoples were (and one could argue still are) “objects” under the law. </p>
<p>Indigenous Sovereignty remains a separate concept and means something entirely different but is marginalised to Indigenous politics. It remains marginalised because of the history of <a href="https://www.atns.net.au/understanding-sovereignty">Terra Nullius</a> being applied to justify colonisation and the refusal of contemporary politicians to advocate on the issue. Indigenous Sovereignty has deep significance in the fight for recognition, and there are many models of what <a href="https://indigenousx.com.au/sovereignty-but-what-model/">Indigenous Sovereignty</a> looks like.</p>
<p>However, sovereignty cannot simply exist, it can only be asserted, claimed, or taken - which is the antithesis of Indigenous law and lore. </p>
<p>Sovereignty and the assertion of sovereignty is a critical item of Indigenous activism in Australia – the only commonwealth country <a href="https://www.atns.net.au/understanding-sovereignty">without an agreement</a> between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. Terra Nullius was enacted in Australia because the colonial invaders believed the Indigenous Peoples were uncivilised and thus did not possess sovereignty, therefore did not have the right to exclude the invaders from their lands. Therefore, the notion of Indigenous Sovereignty is intertwined with the activism for Treaty and the pursuit of self-determination.</p>
<p>Sovereignty however, has been <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/post-neoliberalism-and-politics-of-sovereignty/">hijacked</a> by the alt-right and their version of sovereignty is about the rights of (white) individuals to do what they like without the subordination of the outside authorities.</p>
<h2>How does this impact Indigenous people?</h2>
<p>White protesters co-opting Indigenous causes for their own “sovereignty” agenda is problematic in a number of ways.</p>
<p>First Nations people are often expected to educate those around us, and to freely give emotional and cultural labour. Providing such labour when educating about systemic violence <a href="https://www.dca.org.au/sites/default/files/dca_synopsisreport_web_0.pdf">while</a> concurrently facing disadvantage due to white privilege in systems takes a significant toll. However, speaking out and protesting has very real <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/07/opinions/capitol-rioters-contrast-with-june-2020-black-lives-matter-jones/index.html">life and death</a> consequences for Indigenous People that white people do not need to consider.</p>
<p>First Nations People in Australia are the most criminalised and incarcerated <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/movie/incarceration-nation/1930938947662?/?cx_cid=od:search:sem:convert:alwayson::prog&gclid=Cj0KCQiA0eOPBhCGARIsAFIwTs6pRmmKOcIeb_YpP-_iOashzp-m6wAwOSAJi33-yWXHOsEraB6lAMcaAr0pEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds">in the world</a>, and are at a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/dec/06/beyond-heartbreaking-500-indigenous-deaths-in-custody-since-1991-royal-commission">higher risk</a> of dying in custody. </p>
<p>White people also do not need to manage the same burdens, cultural loads or responsibilities, such as being asked to be the representative of their entire race. Nor are they collectively condemned when one white person does something that is considered “wrong”.</p>
<p>The far-right appropriating Indigenous causes is <a href="https://www.hcn.org/issues/51.16/tribal-affairs-far-right-extremists-appropriate-indigenous-struggles-for-violent-ends">not new</a> and often used to justify acts of violence. The far-right appropriate language about “rights” and twist them to fuel their own propaganda. This has been an effective tool to recruit all sorts of disenfranchised people.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/who-are-the-original-sovereigns-who-were-camped-out-at-old-parliament-house-and-what-are-their-aims-174694">Who are the 'Original Sovereigns' who were camped out at Old Parliament House and what are their aims?</a>
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<p>In order to stop the momentum of these groups and their toxic way of thinking, we must ensure white people are no longer ignorant of the power of white privilege and the effect dysfunctionality speech, deficit narratives and systemic racism have on Indigenous Peoples and communities.</p>
<p>Many people may feel we are living in uncertain times, and these protest groups might try to pretend they have the answers people seek. But they do not. These groups encourage a pattern of ignorance that maintains <a href="https://academic.oup.com/pq/article/71/4/pqaa073/5942654?login=true">social inequity</a> for marginalised groups.</p>
<p>Instead these groups fuel hate speech, create further division in communities, and do nothing to bring stability to uncertain times.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/168368/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kelly Menzel does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Recently, white protesters have attempted to co-opt Indigenous peoples’ call for sovereignty and self-determination for their own agendas.Kelly Menzel, Assistant Professor - First Nations Health, Bond UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1755332022-01-27T15:09:28Z2022-01-27T15:09:28ZRule of law in South Africa protects even those who scorn it<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/442317/original/file-20220124-21-c70zys.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Lindiwe Sisulu pledges to uphold the constitution before fomer Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng in 2014.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">GCIS/Flickr</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Yet another war of words is being waged in South Africa, ostensibly over the role of the courts in delivering the change envisaged in the <a href="https://www.justice.gov.za/legislation/constitution/saconstitution-web-eng.pdf">constitution</a>. As usual, given that most attacks on court judgements have come from leading members of the governing African National Congress (ANC), the opening salvos were fired by a member of the cabinet – tourism minister Lindiwe Sisulu, in <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/dailynews/opinion/lindiwe-sisulu-hi-mzansi-have-we-seen-justice-d9b151e5-e5db-4293-aa21-dcccd52a36d3?_ga=2.65286957.249107170.1642404523-1387260856.1549361579">a recent opinion piece in the media</a>. </p>
<p>In the piece, she clearly seeks to evade her (the ANC’s) direct responsibility for their failure over the past 27 years effectively to implement policies and programmes that would have delivered socio-economic rights and services to alleviate <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-can-be-done-to-tackle-the-systemic-causes-of-poverty-in-south-africa-169866">poverty</a> and <a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/southafrica/overview#1">inequality</a>. </p>
<p>Aside from calling some black judges <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/dailynews/opinion/lindiwe-sisulu-hi-mzansi-have-we-seen-justice-d9b151e5-e5db-4293-aa21-dcccd52a36d3?_ga=2.65286957.249107170.1642404523-1387260856.1549361579">“mentally colonised” and “house negroes”</a>, Sisulu threw in rhetoric about imperial impositions and the negation of African values. She singled out the rule of law for particular disdain.</p>
<p>This seems odd because politicians mostly claim adherence to the rule of law even if not honouring it in practice. So rejecting it seems to break with one of the essential foundations of any constitutional democracy.</p>
<p>Let us look more closely at the meaning of the rule of law, and why it has come to be the favoured foundation for constitutional democratic governance throughout the world over the past century.</p>
<h2>The rule of law</h2>
<p>The modern origins of the rule of law are usually traced to the work of the English constitutional lawyer A.V. Dicey. <a href="https://files.libertyfund.org/files/1714/0125_Bk.pdf">In his Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution</a> (1885), he defined the rule of law as follows:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The absolute supremacy … of regular law as opposed to the influence of arbitrary power … It means, again, equality before the law, or the equal subjection of all classes to the ordinary law of the land administered by the ordinary Law Courts; the ‘rule of law’ in this sense excludes the idea of any exemption of officials or others from the duty of obedience to the law which governs other citizens</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Dicey added a third leg to this definition, noting that in England the rule of law was established through popular struggles of ordinary people. This resonates with South Africans’ experience in resisting apartheid.</p>
<p>After the second world war, the rule of law became the rallying cry for all sorts of political and social movements. </p>
<p>The great Marxist social historian E.P. Thompson said (in 1975) the fact that the ruling class was forced to rule by law, and not by abuse of power, was a <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/Whigs_and_Hunters.html?id=eKRZAAAAYAAJ&redir_esc=y">cultural achievement of universal significance</a>. Thompson was sceptical about law, but reached this conclusion studying the popular resistance waged in the late 1700s by ordinary people in England against unjust rules irregularly enforced.</p>
<p>The appeal of the rule of law was also enhanced when it was extended to include socio-economic rights. This was triggered by the rapid pace of decolonisation during the 1960s, and pressure from newly independent Asian and African democracies.</p>
<p>The rule of law thus came to embody the rallying cry for the fair and democratic exercise of public power, buttressed by law and fundamental rights. One of South Africa’s leading academic lawyers, Tony Mathews, <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=pZcLb6dn2dsC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false">refined Dicey’s definition</a> (1975) by laying down preconditions for what would qualify as “law” and by insisting on the equal guarantee of all basic rights and freedoms.</p>
<h2>Rule of law and accountability</h2>
<p>So the rule of law today has developed greatly since it was first formulated. It has responded to the struggles of those resisting imperialism and autocratic rule throughout the world. </p>
<p>It now demands not only rule by law and the protection of basic rights. It also demands that those who exercise public power account for their decisions and actions. They must justify any departures from constitutional and lawful mandates before an independent and impartial court of law.</p>
<p>The erstwhile apartheid regime argued that it complied with the rule of law. But it plainly did not: although it mostly <a href="https://digitalcommons.nyls.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1431&context=fac_articles_chapters">ruled by law</a>, the rules it adopted did not comply with the generally understood concept of the rule of law. </p>
<p>In particular, most of its laws were premised on “race” inequality and the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">denial of basic rights and freedoms to all</a>. Against this background, the demands by anti-apartheid campaigners inside South Africa over many decades to entrench the rule of law are hardly surprising. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/lindiwe-sisulu-trading-on-a-famous-south-african-surname-has-its-limits-175150">Lindiwe Sisulu: trading on a famous South African surname has its limits</a>
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<p>The ANC committed to government authority limited by law in its <a href="https://scnc.ukzn.ac.za/doc/hist/freedomchart/freedomch.html">1955 Freedom Charter</a> and <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/sites/default/files/DC/Spn2689.1684.5161.000.056.Spn2689.2/Spn2689.1684.5161.000.056.Spn2689.2.pdf">1988 Constitutional Guidelines</a>. Thus there was strong support during the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/convention-democratic-south-africa-codesa">constitutional negotiations of the early 1990s</a> for the rule of law as a founding value of the post-apartheid democratic regime.</p>
<p>So the <a href="https://www.justice.gov.za/legislation/constitution/saconstitution-web-eng.pdf">1996 constitution</a> provides in section 1 that </p>
<blockquote>
<p>South Africa is one, sovereign, democratic state founded on the following values: … (c) Supremacy of the constitution and the rule of law.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is widely referred to by all judicial officers, particularly in holding the executive and public administration to account for their exercise of public power.</p>
<p>The rule of law thus provides a universal benchmark for assessing the accountability of government for the lawful, effective, efficient and uncorrupt provision of goods and services. It is precisely the corrupt abuse of power that has become so widespread in public governance since about 2010 (<a href="https://www.loot.co.za/product/richard-calland-the-zuma-years/lwlk-1845-g5a0">under former president Jacob Zuma</a>) that threatens the survival of the rule of law. Had it not been for the many court judgments upholding the rule of law, the country would be in a far worse position now.</p>
<h2>Minister Sisulu’s claims in context</h2>
<p>So what accounts for this most recent and shockingly intemperate assault on the judiciary? </p>
<p>Minister Sisulu appeared to be attacking the courts for their critical role in <a href="https://theconversation.com/is-south-africas-constitutional-court-protecting-democracy-107443">upholding the rule of law</a>. </p>
<p>She vilified (black) judges for requiring compliance with the constitution and parliamentary laws, and for demanding accountability for the exercise of public power. But she proposed no solutions for the problem she manufactured.</p>
<p>Her remarks coincided with the release of the <a href="https://www.scribd.com/document/550966842/Judicial-Commission-of-Inquiry-Into-State-Capture-Report-Part-1#from_embed">first of Justice Raymond Zondo’s reports on state capture</a>. The report contains <a href="https://theconversation.com/state-capture-report-chronicles-extent-of-corruption-in-south-africa-but-will-action-follow-174441">harsh criticism of the corruption</a> and abuse of power by the ANC and its leaders. </p>
<p>The governing party’s reputation is in tatters and public pressure for accountability mounts. Must one thus conclude that it is Justice Raymond Zondo and the state capture commission, together with that faction of the ANC which is regarded as being in favour of the foundational values of South Africa’s constitutional democracy, that are the real targets of Sisulu’s vitriol?</p>
<p>It is often argued that a constitutional regime is only as good as the protections it provides for those who oppose government, even from within. The rule of law is the key element in any such dispensation. Those who would destroy the rule of law and its enforcer, the judiciary, should ask themselves: to whom will I turn for protection if I find myself on the wrong side of political power?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/175533/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hugh Corder has in the past received funding from the National Research Foundation of South Africa. He serves as a Director of Freedom under Law and on the Executive Committee of the Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution.</span></em></p>The rule of law embodies the rallying cry for the fair and democratic exercise of public power, buttressed by law and fundamental rights.Hugh Corder, Professor Emeritus of Public Law, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1715052021-11-18T14:02:51Z2021-11-18T14:02:51ZCharlotte Maxeke book highlights tensions of visibility and erasure in South African history<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/431650/original/file-20211112-17-m1jb4p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C137%2C613%2C436&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Charlotte Mmakgoko Mannya- Maxeke has been immortalised in several works</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>This year the South African <a href="https://www.gov.za/speeches/sport-arts-and-culture-launches-year-charlotte-mannya-maxeke-30-april-29-apr-2021-0000">government</a> set about honouring Charlotte Mannya Maxeke, one of the country’s most remarkable women who was born 150 years ago. It is said she was only the “second woman to be memorialised and honoured in this way since 2018 when (anti-apartheid) struggle icon <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/albertina-nontsikelelo-sisulu">Albertina Sisulu</a> was honoured”. </p>
<p>Charlotte Makgomo Mannya-Maxeke was born in 1871. Through funding from the African Methodist Episcopal Church, <a href="https://wilberforcepayne.libguides.com/c.php?g=763792&p=5478039">she graduated from Wilberforce University</a> in Ohio and became the first black South African woman to earn a degree, in 1901.</p>
<p>When she returned home to South Africa she became involved in many movements. She was the founding president of the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/bantu-womens-league">Bantu Women’s League</a>, which was established in 1918, and president of the <a href="http://ncaw.org/">National Council of African Women</a>, founded in 1937. She was instrumental in the establishment of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in the country. By the time she died in 1939 she was a force to reckon with in South Africa’s socio-political sphere.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-eight-must-read-african-novels-to-get-you-through-lockdown-136543">The eight must-read African novels to get you through lockdown</a>
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<p>Various events have marked the memorial year. A play, <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/entertainment/whats-on/pretoria/napo-masheane-evokes-the-spirit-of-charlotte-maxeke-in-new-play-tsogo-7fcf735b-e39b-4c9e-9836-993262f43860">Tsogo: The Rise of Charlotte Maxeke</a> was staged at the State Theatre, written by <a href="https://howlround.com/commons/napo-masheane">Napo Masheane</a>. Previous works about her include Zubeida Jaffer’s biography, <a href="https://www.zubeidajaffer.co.za/beauty-of-the-heart/">Beauty of the Heart</a>, Margaret McCord’s <a href="https://xarrabooks.com/shop/the-calling-of-katie-makhanya/">The Calling of Katie Makhanya</a>, and Thozama April’s <a href="http://etd.uwc.ac.za/xmlui/handle/11394/1627">PhD thesis</a>, on her intellectual contribution to the struggle for liberation in South Africa. A documentary about her life, <a href="https://cmmi.org.za/event/the-charlotte-mannya-maxeke-documentary-film-for-the-people/">For the People</a>, was also launched.</p>
<p>Now her grand-nephew Modidima Mannya has published a <a href="http://mannyamodidima.co.za/">book</a>, Lessons from Charlotte Makgomo Mannya-Maxeke, to add to the cultural, literary and scholarly engagement with her. We now have a variety of readings, representations and interpretations which show the complexity of not only her life, but the way South Africa’s history tends to be portrayed.</p>
<p>According to the back cover blurb, Mannya’s book:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>does not only provide an accurate account of her life through oral history from an insider perspective, but also presents a scholarly account through archival research.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The book also claims that it is “not a biography” but rather it is “about the ethos and the values [Charlotte Maxeke] espoused”. </p>
<p>Much like the play <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/entertainment/whats-on/pretoria/napo-masheane-evokes-the-spirit-of-charlotte-maxeke-in-new-play-tsogo-7fcf735b-e39b-4c9e-9836-993262f43860">Tsogo</a>, which represented her life through seven characters, Mannya’s book is divided into chapters that deal with different facets of her life. These include her character, religion, education, politics, support for women’s rights, leadership and racial inequality. </p>
<p>The book reads as a consolidation of the previous works on Charlotte Maxeke. While the appendices include tributes, articles and government documents and letters by and about her, it is not clear whether the overall book offers anything new. The scant bibliography belies the extensive interest in her. The author’s reflection on his ancestor is revealing of the difficulty of writing about such a complex character. </p>
<h2>Retelling the story of a complex life</h2>
<p>Mannya’s book claims to be an accurate account of Charlotte Maxeke’s life. I found this jarring, given the contested nature of archives, which are curated based on who has power, and the nature of oral history, which is always in flux depending on who is telling the story. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/431561/original/file-20211111-21-1pr1ost.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/431561/original/file-20211111-21-1pr1ost.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=848&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/431561/original/file-20211111-21-1pr1ost.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=848&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/431561/original/file-20211111-21-1pr1ost.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=848&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/431561/original/file-20211111-21-1pr1ost.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1065&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/431561/original/file-20211111-21-1pr1ost.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1065&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/431561/original/file-20211111-21-1pr1ost.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1065&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p>Thanks to the public events and the scholarly engagement with her life and work, Charlotte has become one of the most visible South African women from the 19th and 20th centuries. But her visibility is not without its problems.</p>
<p>While Mannya attempts to place Charlotte within a milieu, the book takes away from the stories of the women who would have been her peers, friends and comrades. The African National Congress (ANC), South Africa’s governing party, has “reclaimed” her because she was the only woman present in 1912 when the party was established, but Mannya is at pains to show that </p>
<blockquote>
<p>She was certainly neither a member of the SANNC nor of the ANC. Charlotte died in 1939 before women could be admitted as members of the ANC in 1943.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The SANNC, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/formation-south-african-native-national-congress">South African Native National Congress</a>, is the original name of the ANC when it was formed. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/anc-womens-league-ancwl">ANC Women’s League</a> was established in 1948. It is linked to the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/bantu-womens-league">Bantu Women’s League</a> though scholars such as <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10130950.1990.9676171">Frene Ginwala</a> have complicated this connection. This points to the need for more research.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/book-review-sindiwe-magonas-devastating-uplifting-story-of-south-african-women-166186">Book review: Sindiwe Magona's devastating, uplifting story of South African women</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>This focus on Charlotte’s relationship with one organisation undermines the ways she would have related to women in her network. For example, Adelaide Tantsi, <a href="https://africasacountry.com/2020/02/excavating-forgotten-histories-in-south-africa">a poet and teacher</a>, is not mentioned as among the other South African women at Wilberforce University alongside her. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1017-04992014000300008">Nokutela Dube</a>, teacher, musician and co-founder of <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/ohlange-institute-declared-national-heritage-site-33324489">Ohlange Institute</a> with ANC founding president John Dube, is mentioned. But they are not linked together as women whose paths would have crossed politically, through the church and as founders of schools and while travelling abroad. There is very little engagement with the women who built the Bantu Women’s League alongside Charlotte, or with <a href="https://dacb.org/stories/southafrica/soga-mina/">Mina Soga</a>, one of the founders of the <a href="http://ncaw.org/history">National Council of African Women</a>.</p>
<h2>Exceptionalism and erasure</h2>
<p>Mannya chooses political activists such as <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/winnie-madikizela-mandela">Winnie Madikizela-Mandela</a> and <a href="https://www.uj.ac.za/newandevents/Pages/vc-awards/ELLEN-KUZWAYO.aspx">Ellen Kuzwayo</a>, who no doubt were inspired by Charlotte as young women but were not her peers. This inclusion seems anachronistic – an attempt to read Charlotte through a modern framework rather than locating her within her context. </p>
<p>Charlotte’s life was a network of relationships and organisations where she was constantly building political, spiritual, intellectual, transnational and social connections. It is not possible that she did this alone. Making an exception of her risks making her the sole representative of black women who lived at the turn of the century. It erases the stories of other women who lived and built organisations alongside her.</p>
<p>This book is an invitation to ask more questions about how we make meaning of history. The book contributes to the larger South African story and the ways in which it reproduces Charlotte Maxeke at the expense of many women whose stories still need to be told. It challenges us to look closer at historical narratives which often fall off the radar. </p>
<p><em>Lessons from Charlotte Makgomo Mannya-Maxeke is <a href="http://mannyamodidima.co.za/">self-published by the author</a></em>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/171505/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Athambile Masola does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Thanks to the public events and the scholarly engagement with her life and work, Charlotte Maxeke has become one of the most visible South African women from the 19th and 20th centuries.Athambile Masola, Lecturer, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1698562021-10-14T14:39:01Z2021-10-14T14:39:01ZFrench football legend Lilian Thuram tackles the scourge of white thinking in new book<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/426383/original/file-20211014-24-1otycxg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">French Lilian Thuram slips away from Italian player Stefano Fiore during the France vs Italy Final of the Euro 2000 soccer championhips in Rotterdam.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EFE-EPA/Michele Limina</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>“People aren’t born white, they become white.” This realisation dawned on the former French footballer, World Cup winner and anti-racism activist <a href="https://www.sportskeeda.com/player/lilian-thuram">Lilian Thuram</a> while he was engaged in talks with the white French organisers of a proposed exhibition on racism. As he recounts in the introduction to his new book, <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/White-Thinking-Racial-Constructed-Beyond/dp/1800313446">White Thinking</a>, Thuram told those around the table that, instead of focusing on the victims of racism, the exhibition </p>
<blockquote>
<p>should instead focus on those who profit from this discrimination, often unconsciously and unintentionally.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>He was referring, of course, to white people. However, the idea that an exhibition on racism should focus on the problematic nature of whiteness was almost incomprehensible to them. </p>
<p>It was this failed dialogue around the nature of racism that prompted Thuram to write White Thinking, of which I am one of the English translators, alongside Aedín Ní Loingsigh and Cristina Johnston.</p>
<p>Thuram’s first <a href="https://www.amazon.com/My-Black-Stars-Barack-Obama/dp/1800859171">book</a>, My Black Stars: From Lucy to Barack Obama, published in 2010, sought to challenge the white version of history and culture that he had learned in school in France by telling some of the black stories denied him in his childhood. </p>
<p>Now, in White Thinking, he has come to the realisation that this white story and the white thinking that underpins it need to be overturned. </p>
<p>The book was first published in France in late 2020. It provoked both acclaim and heavy criticism. Elements of the right-wing press in particular lambasted the book for its “<a href="https://www.valeursactuelles.com/societe/dans-une-interview-a-la-frontiere-du-racisme-thuram-qualifie-le-privilege-blanc-de-privilege-existentiel/">frequently racialising discourse</a>”. Many journalists and politicians on the right politically, as well as conservative Republicans, viewed the book as “anti-white racism”. </p>
<p>This was a charge that had been levelled at Thuram in late 2019 when <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.fr/entry/lilian-thuram-accuse-de-racisme-avec-sa-sortie-contre-le-racisme_fr_5d7109a9e4b09bbc9efa88a7">he gave an interview in Italy</a> about the racism present in football stadiums, which he argued was representative of a wider racism in Italian and European society more generally. </p>
<p>There was, however, significant praise from liberal and left-wing publications, such as Libération and Télérama, which recognised that the book delivered often unwelcome but necessary truths about ongoing racial inequality.</p>
<p>Thuram’s book is hugely ambitious, an attempt to trace and examine the origins of white supremacy, understood in its widest sense. This is not simply a study of vile racists but of an insidious, unthinking form of racial hierarchy, whose origins can be traced back to slavery and colonisation, and which still shapes our understanding of the world today. </p>
<p>Indeed, white thinking, Thuram argues, is not limited to white people. He cites two examples from his frequent visits to Africa. In Ouagadougou, a man he encounters in the street tells him that </p>
<blockquote>
<p>White people come second only to God.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>When he tells this story to the mayor of Ouagadougou, he’s told:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It’s not surprising. We have a saying here: “God is great but the White man is not small”. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>This, Thuram argues, tells us all we need to know about the pervasiveness of white thinking.</p>
<h2>Challenging French universalist ideology</h2>
<p>Thuram was born on the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe in 1972 and moved to the outskirts of Paris at the age of 9. An elegant full-back and centre-half, with Monaco, Parma, Juventus and Barcelona, he won a record number of caps for the French national team, won the <a href="https://talksport.com/football/376835/world-cups-most-iconic-players-france-defender-lilian-thuram/">World Cup in 1998</a> (scoring the winning goals in the semi-final) and the European Championship <a href="https://www.uefa.com/uefaeuro-2020/news/0253-0d7bc734d450-864a19430c15-1000--euro-2000-team-of-the-tournament/">in 2000</a>.</p>
<p>Thuram began his transformation from athlete to activist while he was still a competitive sportsman. In the mid-2000s, he spoke out against politicians such as <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Nicolas-Sarkozy">Nicolas Sarkozy</a>, the tough-talking minister for the interior, and later president. Sarkozy had demonised youngsters living in the poor, marginalised and multi-racial high-rise estates in the suburbs, many of whom were children of immigrants from north and sub-Saharan Africa. In 2005, he infamously stated that he would clear out the “louts” from the suburbs, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/nov/11/france.jonhenley?CMP=gu_com">which should be washed out with a power hose (Karcher)</a>. </p>
<p>Thuram had grown up in just such an estate. So had many of his fellow players in the French squad.</p>
<p>In 2008, when he retired from playing, he created a foundation to provide a platform for his fight against racism. <a href="https://www.thuram.org/">The Lilian Thuram Foundation for Education against Racism</a> is particularly concerned with anti-racism outreach work, often targeted at schoolchildren.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/426178/original/file-20211013-19-1fzyl7b.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/426178/original/file-20211013-19-1fzyl7b.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=820&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426178/original/file-20211013-19-1fzyl7b.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=820&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426178/original/file-20211013-19-1fzyl7b.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=820&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426178/original/file-20211013-19-1fzyl7b.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1030&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426178/original/file-20211013-19-1fzyl7b.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1030&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426178/original/file-20211013-19-1fzyl7b.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1030&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p>For many, Thuram will still be best known as a member of the multiracial French team that won the <a href="https://www.fifa.com/tournaments/mens/worldcup/1998france">World Cup in 1998</a>, and were famously celebrated as representing “la France <a href="https://qz.com/1327617/world-cup-2018-frances-success-masks-underlying-race-tensions/">black, blanc, beur</a>” (black, white, Arab) in a play on the red, white and blue of the French tricolour flag. </p>
<p>Thuram believed the team did indeed constitute a celebration of the nation’s diversity. But he was perturbed by an emerging media and political discourse that sought to celebrate the team as embodying the success of French “integration” policies.</p>
<p><a href="https://meridian-magazine.com/why-french-universalism-is-the-wrong-response-to-the-black-lives-matter-movement/">French universalist ideology</a> typically imagines a nation made up of equal citizens and, within that framework, France has long given refuge to outsiders on condition that they are willing to be integrated into the dominant, secular Republican culture. </p>
<p>Or, to put it in the starker terms of a popular saying: immigrants and refugees can become French, as long as they leave the baggage of their foreign identity at the door.</p>
<h2>Conclusion</h2>
<p>The three translators of White Thinking were faced with the challenge of rendering in English slippery concepts such as “integration” for a British audience more accustomed to multicultural, hyphenated notions of identity. For example, how do you find a pithy way of explaining for the general public the French Republican antipathy towards <a href="https://confrontations.org/admin/the-paradox-of-communitarianism/"><em>communautarisme</em></a>? It’s a term often used to describe as a threat to French universal Republican values any attempt to assert a particular, communal, minority identity or experience.</p>
<p>The translation experience brought to mind the work undertaken by Johny Pitts in his pioneering study, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/transition.113.44">Afropeans</a>. Pitts seeks to explore both the particular nature of the black experience in various European countries and the commonalities that are all too plain to see when you take the time to look closely. </p>
<p>So, yes, we need to understand the specific nature of French Republican debates about race and citizenship. But, fundamentally, is there a major difference between the French discussion of integration or communitarianism and British debates about the “good” immigrant who respects “British values” and the “bad” immigrant who doesn’t?</p>
<p>Having worked with the Thuram Foundation on various projects over the past two years, I have been struck by how much Thuram’s words and ideas find echoes in the increasingly confident public proclamations on race (and other social matters) by young black British footballers such as <a href="https://pearnkandola.com/diversity-and-inclusion-hub/bias/raheem-sterling-shining-spotlight-modern-racism/">Raheem Sterling</a>, <a href="https://www.si.com/soccer/2021/07/13/marcus-rashford-mural-england-manchester-racism-euro-2020">Marcus Rashford</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/jul/13/england-tyrone-mings-criticises-priti-patel-over-racism-remarks">Tyrone Mings</a>. </p>
<p>However, there remains a reciprocal lack of awareness of the black experience across national boundaries within Europe. And it is still far more common to look instinctively to the African American context for models of how to resist and bring about change. </p>
<p>In that context, the publication of White Thinking is perhaps another small step towards building that <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/may/30/afropean-by-johny-pitts-review">Afropean sense of identity envisaged by Johny Pitts</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/169856/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Murphy has done voluntary work with the Lilian Thuram Foundation for Education against Racism since 2019.</span></em></p>The book reveals an insidious, unthinking form of racial hierarchy.David Murphy, Professor of French and Postcolonial Studies, University of Strathclyde Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1670032021-09-07T14:55:37Z2021-09-07T14:55:37ZYoung people and women bear the brunt of South Africa’s worrying jobless rate<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/418863/original/file-20210901-16-wk12bo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Women fill plastic shopping bags with light polyethelene plastics to make soccer balls from re-used plastics in Cape Town. Women bear the brunt of joblessness in South Africa.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EFE-EPA/Nic Bothma</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>South Africa’s unemployment figures have made for grim reading for a long time. The <a href="http://www.statssa.gov.za/publications/P0211/P02112ndQuarter2021.pdf">latest</a> for the second quarter of 2021 were, by several measures, gloomier than usual. The official unemployment rate for the second quarter <a href="https://www.news24.com/fin24/economy/one-in-3-south-africans-looking-for-jobs-and-it-could-get-even-worse-20210825">worsened to 34.4%</a>. This is the highest the rate has been since the survey was started in 2008.</p>
<p>Worse is still to come: analysts <a href="https://mg.co.za/business/2021-07-22-employment-bloodbath-on-the-cards/">have warned</a> that the effects of the July 2021 <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-lies-behind-social-unrest-in-south-africa-and-what-might-be-done-about-it-166130">violent unrest</a> that swept through two provinces that are the <a href="http://www.statssa.gov.za/publications/P0441/GDP%202020%20Q4%20(Media%20presentation).pdf#page=47">biggest contributors to economic output</a> are not yet reflected in employment figures.</p>
<p>We considered youth unemployment trends by using two sets of data – Statistics South Africa’s Quarterly Labour Force Survey and the long-running <a href="http://www.nids.uct.ac.za/">National Income Dynamics Survey</a>. As has long been the case, young people bear a disproportionate share of the unemployment burden. <a href="http://www.statssa.gov.za/?page_id=1856&PPN=P0211&SCH=72944">Nearly two-thirds</a>, or 64.4%, of people aged between 15 and 24 are unemployed. This is <a href="https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---dgreports/---dcomm/---publ/documents/publication/wcms_737648.pdf">among the highest recorded in the world</a>.</p>
<p>We <a href="https://www.uj.ac.za/faculties/humanities/csda/Documents/Youth%20Unemployment%20report%20FINAL%20interactive.pdf">examined</a> why this is the case in a chapter, “South Africa’s high youth unemployment: structural features and current responses”, in the book <em>Youth in South Africa: Agency, (In)visibility and National Development</em>, edited by Ariane De Lannoy, Malose Langa and Heidi Brooks, due to be published in November.</p>
<p>Our analysis showed that youth unemployment is embedded in the long-standing structural dynamics of a labour market that has for several decades left far too many young people at the margins of the economy.</p>
<p>We developed a gap analysis, identifying what’s missing and what else needs to be done to address youth unemployment. The research found that most of the drivers of youth unemployment are addressed with current instruments. But the underlying causes of limited job growth, gender inequalities in employment and increasing discouragement among youth are not specifically addressed.</p>
<p>In addition, more needs to be done to ensure the coordination of policies to make the journey from learning to earning more seamless for a young person. </p>
<p>Finally, existing policy interventions can’t promote the levels of youth employment required in a context of low economic growth and low job growth.</p>
<h2>Unpacking the data</h2>
<p>Although the youth unemployment rate has been consistently high over the past two and a half decades, there was improvement between 2003 and 2007, a period when the country’s economic growth was high. <a href="https://www.uj.ac.za/faculties/humanities/csda/Documents/Youth%20Unemployment%20report%20FINAL%20interactive.pdf">Our analysis</a> reveals that this decrease in youth unemployment was explained largely by increases in the labour market’s capacity to absorb labour.</p>
<p>However, economic growth has been depressed since 2008 and the youth unemployment rate has steadily increased. From 2008 to 2020, the youth (15-34 years) unemployment rate – using the expanded definition – rose by 15 percentage points, from 38% to 53%. The <a href="http://www.statssa.gov.za/publications/P0211/P02112ndQuarter2021.pdf#page=17">expanded definition</a> includes both workers who are still actively searching for work and the discouraged workseekers. Comparatively, for those aged between 35 and 64 there was an increase of 10 percentage points, from 17% to 27%.</p>
<p>Racial and gender disparities in access to work are entrenched features of the South African labour market. African youth (15-34 years) have the worst unemployment rate compared to the other groups, at 57%. Young women (15-34 years) across the board experience a higher unemployment rate of 57%, while that of young men is 49%.</p>
<p>The statistics do reflect a positive relationship between economic growth and labour absorption among young people. This means that efforts to significantly reduce youth unemployment are made difficult by the <a href="https://www.afdb.org/en/countries/southern-africa/south-africa/south-africa-economic-outlook">sluggish economic growth rate</a>.</p>
<h2>Interventions</h2>
<p>Our analysis identified four key structural drivers of youth unemployment:</p>
<ul>
<li>low economic growth rates </li>
<li>skills mismatches </li>
<li>continued spatial inequalities </li>
<li>labour market inefficiencies. </li>
</ul>
<p>In response to these and other unemployment drivers, a number of Active Labour Market Programmes exist. These are macro-level interventions aimed at keeping people employed, ensuring that more people become employed, and <a href="https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/17053">improving the efficiency of the labour market</a>.</p>
<p>The first set of interventions are about protecting jobs – that is to limit the number of jobs lost during economic downturns or company difficulties. For instance, the department of employment and labour <a href="http://www.treasury.gov.za/documents/national%20budget/2019/ene/FullENE.pdf">sets aside a portion</a> of the Unemployment Insurance Fund annually for initiatives that support turnaround strategies for companies in distress. The funds are also used for reskilling employees to minimise job losses.</p>
<p>Perhaps the largest set of interventions are labour absorbing. These are programmes that create work opportunities funded through public expenditure, including the <a href="https://www.gov.za/about-government/government-programmes/expanded-public-works-programme">Expanded Public Works Programmes</a>, the <a href="https://www.gov.za/CommunityWorkProgramme">Community Work Programme</a> and the <a href="http://www.nyda.gov.za/Products-Services/National-Youth-Services-Programme">National Youth Service</a>. They are intended to absorb large numbers of unemployed people, and youth in particular, into work or service opportunities.</p>
<p>The third set of interventions give employers incentives to hire more workers. One example is the <a href="https://www.sars.gov.za/types-of-tax/pay-as-you-earn/employment-tax-incentive-eti/">Employment Tax Incentive</a>. It is a tax-based intervention which encourages employers to hire young people in return for a tax rebate on the pay-as-you-earn tax that the company is liable to pay for each employee.</p>
<p>The fourth type of intervention is labour market intermediation – interventions intended to achieve better connection between employers and employees. Such interventions include workseeker support offered through the department of employment and labour’s Public Employment Support programmes, and private employment agencies such as <a href="https://www.lulaway.co.za/">Lulaway</a>, <a href="https://www.giraffe.co.za/">Giraffe</a> and <a href="https://jobjack.co.za/">JobJack</a>. </p>
<p>Another example of intermediation efforts deals with spatial inequalities. In recent years, a transport subsidy has been tested to ascertain whether providing work seekers with a transport voucher would alleviate the transport costs barrier of work seeking. <a href="https://portal.cepr.org/discussion-paper/15926">Evidence shows</a> that the transport subsidy was ineffective in improving job placement chances.</p>
<p>Finally, a plethora of interventions occur on the supply-side of the labour market, seeking to address skills mismatches.</p>
<h2>Filling the gaps</h2>
<p>We developed our gap analysis by drawing on a <a href="https://www.uj.ac.za/faculties/humanities/csda/Documents/Youth%20Unemployment%20report%20FINAL%20interactive.pdf">synthesis of existing research on the drivers</a>, mapped against existing interventions. For every driver we considered whether an active labour market programme existed to address it. This allowed us to draw conclusions about gaps in the current offerings.</p>
<p>Our analysis reveals that for most of the drivers, programmes exist to address them. However, these are severely hampered by low job growth. </p>
<p>Further, we found that there is little coordination between interventions. This leaves many young people struggling to understand what their next step is in their labour market journeys. </p>
<p>Increasing discouragement rates also point to the need for better curated and coordinated support that is easily accessible to young people as they seek to navigate labour market opportunities.</p>
<p>The issue of gender is an oversight in current strategies. While many programmes have targets for reaching women, they don’t address some of the barriers that women face in entering and remaining connected to the labour market – such as the higher burden of care that women face (which has <a href="https://cramsurvey.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Casale-Gender-the-early-effects-of-the-COVID-19-crisis-in-the-paid-unpaid-economies-in-South-Africa.pdf">increased since the COVID-19 pandemic began</a>). This suggests that even in a higher job growth labour market, women may still be left behind.</p>
<p>Finally, economic growth that promotes job growth is the key factor in shifting the youth unemployment challenge. Strategies to promote job-intensive economic growth must be at the forefront of policymakers’ minds. If such growth is achieved, the existing suite of programmes, with some additions to address discouragement and gender inequalities, should ensure that young people are well placed to take up jobs.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/167003/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lauren Graham receives funding from the National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences, the Capacity Building Programme for Employment Promotion, and the British Academy. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cecil Mlatsheni does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Racial and gender disparities in access to work are entrenched features of the South African labour market.Cecil Mlatsheni, Senior lecturer, School of Economics, University of Cape Town, University of Cape TownLauren Graham, Associate professor at the Centre for Social Development in Africa, University of Johannesburg, University of JohannesburgLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1624722021-06-13T07:59:27Z2021-06-13T07:59:27ZSouth Africa needs new thinking for its democracy to work for all<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/405614/original/file-20210610-15-15wx1zd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Many black South Africans live in appalling conditions with no running water or electricity 27 years into democracy. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Anders Pettersson/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Claims of <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2021-06-01-reserve-bank-head-lesetja-kganyago-enters-fray-over-school-diversity/">racial bias</a> against black pupils at affluent private schools are becoming a routine South African event. They are also a symbol of the country’s reality.</p>
<p>The private schools were created by and for white people – this is reflected in their rules and customs. But they are seen as centres of education quality and so black people who can afford them send their children to them. But they either can’t or won’t change into institutions which include everyone. All of which is a fair description of South Africa since 1994.</p>
<p>In a just published <a href="http://witspress.co.za/catalogue/prisoners-of-the-past/">book</a>, <em>Prisoners of the Past: South African Democracy and the Legacy of Minority Rule</em>, I argue that the new order created when racial laws were scrapped <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/04597239308460952?journalCode=tssu20">in 1994</a> is “path dependent” – patterns which held sway in the old order are carried into the new. This does not mean that, as some claim, nothing has changed – anyone who claims there is no difference between <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">racial minority rule</a> and democracy was either not alive before 1994 or not paying attention. But core realities have not changed.</p>
<p>Before 1994, South Africa was divided into white insiders and black outsiders. Some who were outsiders are now insiders, the minority who have <a href="http://www.statssa.gov.za/?page_id=1856&PPN=P0211&SCH=72942">a regular income</a> from the formal economy. But most remain outside. Within the insider group there are divisions: race is the most important.</p>
<p>Although racism is now <a href="https://www.justice.gov.za/legislation/constitution/saconstitution-web-eng.pdf">outlawed</a>, racial pecking orders survive – some black people have been absorbed into a still white-run economy, a reality confirmed by the make-up of boards and <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/business-report/careers/boardrooms-still-very-much-white-and-predominantly-male-c6f4346c-4030-4067-bbb5-1dc61b298a3d">senior management</a>. <a href="https://www.news24.com/citypress/business/black-middle-class-more-than-doubled-but-the-struggle-continues-20190429">Middle class black people</a> are among the angriest South Africans – they enjoy opportunities and hold qualifications which were unavailable to their parents, but experience many of the same racial attitudes. This fuels conflicts which sound like <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2021-03-14-carl-niehaus-tables-radical-economic-transformation-plan-ahead-of-ace-magashules-campaign-for-anc-president/">campaigns for radical economic change</a> but are driven by middle-class anger at the survival of racial barriers. </p>
<p>In the suburbs, people vote overwhelmingly for the opposition and hold the governing African National Congress (ANC) in contempt – in the townships and shack settlements where poor people live, the ANC still dominates although it has <a href="https://theconversation.com/black-south-africans-explain-who-they-voted-for-in-last-poll-and-why-122133">lost some ground</a>. But the quality of public services in suburbs is still way above that <a href="https://www.probono.org.za/service-delivery-protests-in-sa/">in townships</a> and authorities are much more likely to listen to suburbanites who pressure them. Under apartheid, too, the suburbs were well served and well heard, the townships were neither.</p>
<h2>Wrong solutions</h2>
<p>Why has democracy not ended these patterns? First, because the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/convention-democratic-south-africa-codesa">negotiations which ended minority rule</a> tackled only the most obvious problem – that most South Africans were denied citizenship rights. No progress was possible without ending this, but it was only a part of what needed to change. There were no negotiated agreements on the economy or the professions or education.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/405610/original/file-20210610-17-iz00q8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/405610/original/file-20210610-17-iz00q8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=911&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405610/original/file-20210610-17-iz00q8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=911&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405610/original/file-20210610-17-iz00q8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=911&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405610/original/file-20210610-17-iz00q8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1145&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405610/original/file-20210610-17-iz00q8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1145&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405610/original/file-20210610-17-iz00q8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1145&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p>In theory, changing the political system was meant to ensure that everything else changed too. But habits and hierarchies do not disappear simply because political rules change – neither does the balance of power in the economy and society. The political system is now controlled by the formerly excluded black majority – other areas of the country’s life are not.</p>
<p>Second, the political elite who took over in 1994 have not tried to change these realities because they – with, ironically, the old white economic and cultural elite – believe that the goal of democratic South Africa is to extend to everyone what whites enjoyed under apartheid. They have not built a new economic, cultural and social order – they have tried to slot as many black people as possible into what exists. The parents who send their children to suburban private schools and hope they will be treated with respect are following the same path.</p>
<p>Apartheid was good to whites. It gave them the vote and freedom of speech as long as they were not too sympathetic to blacks. It created large formal businesses and, in its heyday, whites were guaranteed a formal job. The suburbs of major cities resembled <a href="https://www.ppic.org/publication/income-inequality-in-california/#:%7E:text=The%20gap%20between%20rich%20and,of%20all%20but%20five%20states.&text=The%20disparity%20is%20present%20throughout,gap%20between%20rich%20and%20poor.">California in the US</a>. It is this which the new and old elite want to extend to everyone.</p>
<p>Despite much talk of <a href="http://www.thedtic.gov.za/financial-and-non-financial-support/b-bbee/broad-based-black-economic-empowerment/">black economic empowerment</a>, far more effort is devoted to the role of black people in the corporations which have dominated the economy for decades than to promoting black-owned businesses. In the professions, new black entrants have been expected to conform to the habits and rules created when whites controlled the society. Culturally, apartheid and its values may be discredited but the West remains the centre of attention.</p>
<p>Everyone can’t have what whites had under apartheid because there isn’t nearly enough of it to go around. While political rights can be enjoyed by everyone, apartheid’s economic and social benefits were what a fraction of the country enjoyed by using force to deny it to the rest. Once apartheid went, the living standards of the minority needed to adjust to what a middle income country could afford. Because they haven’t, there are just so many black people who can benefit.</p>
<p>It is common for the South African debate to blame the government, or particular people in it, for the country’s difficulties. But it is the realities described here which explain poor growth, <a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/southafrica/overview">continued inequality</a> and the many problems of which the debate complains.</p>
<h2>New thinking</h2>
<p>It is easy to see why the white elites prefers the old arrangements – but why does the new black leadership want them? Anywhere one group dominates others, the standards and habits of the group in charge come to be seen as the measure of the good society: for the leadership of those at the wrong end of this, domination only ends when everyone shares in them. The response is very human – but it keeps alive the old order with its <a href="https://theconversation.com/forcing-disclosure-of-wages-and-executive-pay-in-south-africa-is-a-good-idea-heres-why-161433">inequalities</a> and unfairness.</p>
<p>Despite change in important areas this is the reality of post-1994 South Africa. It ensures that the country does not reach anything like its potential – that it is not only less humane than it might be but less well-off too because many are still barred from using their talents and energies to help it to grow.</p>
<p>South Africa is not, the book argues, doomed to follow this path forever. Change needs, firstly, new thinking, an approach which seeks a society which works for all its people. This is unlikely to come from elites, who are wedded to the present, but could be the product of campaigning by citizens. It could create the ground for negotiation which would tackle what the 1994 deal left untouched – how to create a new, shared, society and not only a new political order.</p>
<p>It is this path, not the constant search for the <a href="https://theconversation.com/dont-wait-for-a-beautiful-leader-south-africa-rather-rely-on-the-constitution-68757">perfect political leader</a> who will solve all problems, which could enable South Africa to bury its past and create a better future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/162472/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Steven Friedman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The new governing elite mistakenly believes that the goal of a democratic South Africa is simply to extend to everyone what whites enjoyed under apartheid.Steven Friedman, Professor of Political Studies, University of JohannesburgLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1599022021-06-01T19:10:06Z2021-06-01T19:10:06ZPandemic misery index reveals far-reaching impact of COVID-19 on American lives, especially on Blacks and Latinos<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/402439/original/file-20210524-23-1lmlic6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C6720%2C4476&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Full pandemic recovery for all Americans will require interventions that address systemic inequality.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/portrait-of-sad-young-woman-with-face-protective-royalty-free-image/1217603648?adppopup=true">damircudic/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>With more than <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html">30 million people infected and 550,000 dead</a>, the U.S. is among the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-51235105">nations hardest hit</a> by the COVID-19 pandemic. From job loss to housing insecurity to mental distress, the social, psychological and economic hardships brought on by the pandemic are extensive and likely to outlast the pandemic itself. </p>
<p>To better understand the breadth and depth of the pandemic’s impact on American lives, I worked with colleagues at the <a href="https://cesr.usc.edu">USC Dornsife Center for Economic and Social Research</a> to develop an <a href="https://uasdata.usc.edu/index.php?r=eNpLtDKyqi62MrFSKkhMT1WyLrYyNAeyS5NyMpP1UhJLEvUSU1Ly80ASQDWJKZkpIKaxlZKFuaGSdS1cMG1cJxLl">index of “pandemic misery</a>.” We found that though few U.S. residents have survived the pandemic unscathed, hardship isn’t equally distributed across groups.</p>
<h2>Just how bad it was: 80% experienced a hardship</h2>
<p>The U.S. Pandemic Misery Index uses data we have collected through the <a href="https://covid19pulse.usc.edu">Understanding Coronavirus in America Study</a>, the only nationally representative survey since the start of the pandemic tracking its impact on U.S. residents. This internet-based panel of about 6,000 adults aimed to quantify the serious hardships people have experienced over the course of the pandemic, and to assess the distribution of those experiences across the U.S. adult population.</p>
<p>The index draws on nine indicators of pandemic-related hardship: financial insecurity, food insecurity, symptoms of moderate or severe psychological distress, symptoms of high stress, job loss since March 2020, experience of COVID-19-based discrimination, missing a housing payment, being put in isolation or quarantine, and a COVID-19 diagnosis or perceived COVID-19 infection.</p>
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<p>According to the index, 80% of U.S. adults experienced at least one serious economic, psychological or health hardship between April 2020 and March 2021. Among them, 48% experienced financial insecurity, 29% faced food insecurity and 18% missed a housing payment.</p>
<h2>Pandemic misery has declined over time</h2>
<p>While few in the U.S. remain unscathed by the pandemic, our index shows that the prevalence of U.S. adults experiencing a serious hardship at any given point in time declined by 22 percentage points, from 50% in April 2020 to 28% in March 2021. Some of the biggest declines occurred in the prevalence of financial insecurity, food insecurity, psychological distress, COVID-19-based discrimination and experiences of isolation or quarantine.</p>
<p>For example, the share of adults facing food insecurity dropped from 18% in April 2020 to 7% in March 2021. Similarly, the percentage of adults experiencing moderate to severe psychological distress declined from 16% in April 2020 to 10% in March 2021. </p>
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<h2>Blacks and Latinos more likely to know someone who died</h2>
<p>The pandemic exacerbated racial and ethnic disparities in <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/health-equity/race-ethnicity.html">health</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2020685118">financial security</a>. According to our index, racial and ethnic disparities appear largely unchanged a year into the pandemic.</p>
<p>While most U.S. adults have suffered in some way as a result of the pandemic, Latino and Black residents have clearly been hit the hardest. Almost 9 in 10 Latinos (89%) and 86% of Black people have faced at least one serious hardship since the start of the pandemic, compared to 80% of Asians and 76% of whites.</p>
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<p>Furthermore, despite a decline in the prevalence of hardship across racial and ethnic groups, Latino and Black residents continue to face hardship at a higher rate than white and Asian residents. For example, 63% of Latino residents reported one or more hardships compared to 46% of white residents in April 2020, a 27 percentage point gap. This gap persisted in March 2021 at 24 percentage points, with 34% of Latinos and 26% of whites reporting one or more hardships. </p>
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<p>The disparity between Asians and whites has largely disappeared over the course of the pandemic due to a marked decline in the prevalence of hardship among Asians. While 50% of Asians reported one or more hardships in April 2020, 23% reported a hardship in March 2021. </p>
<p>Asians were also much less likely to report a COVID-19 infection themselves or in their social circle. Since April 2020, 61% of Asians reported knowing at least one person infected with COVID-19, compared to 78% of Latinos, 77% of whites and 70% of Blacks. Nonetheless, Asians have experienced COVID-19-based discrimination – that is, mistreatment due to others thinking they might be infected with COVID-19 – at a <a href="https://theconversation.com/asian-americans-top-target-for-threats-and-harassment-during-pandemic-158011">higher rate than other racial or ethnic groups</a>.</p>
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<p>Additionally, we see large racial and ethnic disparities in the share of U.S. adults who have suffered the loss of someone due to COVID-19. Blacks and Latinos are nearly twice as likely as whites and nearly three times as likely as Asians to report a friend or family member dying due to COVID-19 since April 2020. </p>
<h2>Recovery will require sustained social and government support</h2>
<p>While the share of U.S. adults experiencing serious hardships has declined markedly – from 5 in 10 during the early days of the pandemic to slightly less than 3 in 10 in late March 2021 – a key takeaway from our index is that many continue to face social, psychological and economic distress. More than 2 in 10 U.S. adults, or 23%, reported experiencing financial insecurity, 7% reported food insecurity and 6% reported missing a housing payment as recently as late March 2021.</p>
<p>[<em>Get our best science, health and technology stories.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/science-editors-picks-71/?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=science-best">Sign up for The Conversation’s science newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>The burden of pandemic misery also continues to fall disproportionately on communities of color. While our index shows that the gap has narrowed between whites and Asians, Latino and Black people continue to face hardship at higher rates and will likely face a more difficult path to recovery from the pandemic.</p>
<p>Altogether, these findings underscore the multidimensional nature of the pandemic’s impact on people’s lives. For many Americans, especially Black and Latino Americans, the path to pandemic recovery will require more than a vaccine appointment or a one-off stimulus check. It will require sustained financial assistance, food and housing assistance, and mental health support.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/159902/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The Understanding Coronavirus in America Study is supported in part by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.</span></em></p>A survey finds that hardship disparities across racial and ethnic groups have persisted throughout the pandemic.Kyla Thomas, Sociologist, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and SciencesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1538582021-04-16T12:37:43Z2021-04-16T12:37:43ZFatal police violence may be linked to preterm births in neighborhoods nearby<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386556/original/file-20210225-13-1egzyog.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=11%2C0%2C7589%2C5048&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A demonstration in New York City in June 2020 denounces systemic racism and the police killings of African Americans. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/demonstrators-denouncing-systemic-racism-and-the-police-news-photo/1218028223?adppopup=true">Scott Heins via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Building on generations of work by activists and organizers, there is currently a national reckoning with the impacts of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jul/08/americans-racism-police-brutality-problems-poll">police violence</a> on Black communities underway in the United States. <a href="https://theconversation.com/police-shootings-and-race-in-america-five-essential-reads-65847">It’s well established</a> that killings, injuries and intense surveillance by police can traumatize not only the direct victims, but <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4824697/">their communities</a>. But little research has been done to assess whether police violence has spillover effects on other facets of human health.</p>
<p><a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=MUjnTIAAAAAJ&hl=en">I am an epidemiologist</a> who studies how the social and physical environment shapes maternal and infant health, and my research team and I wanted to investigate whether witnessing the police killing someone – or even living nearby or hearing about it afterward – could <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/11/13/933084699/how-police-violence-could-impact-the-health-of-black-infants">affect the outcome of a healthy pregnancy</a>. Our latest research suggests the answer is yes.</p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/ppe.12753">Our new study</a>, published in March in the journal Paediatric and Perinatal Epidemiology, found that Californians who were pregnant when fatal police violence occurred in their neighborhoods saw increases in preterm birth. For Black mothers, the associations were particularly high: When police killed a Black person in the neighborhood, the hazard of delivering early increased by 35% or 81%, depending on the data source. </p>
<p>Previous studies show stressful or traumatic events of any kind during pregnancy <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.clp.2011.06.007">can be linked</a> to increased risk for preterm birth. Because Black people are <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/48503126">disproportionately victimized</a> by police violence, and because there are stark <a href="https://doi.org/10.1053/j.semperi.2011.02.020">racial and ethnic inequities in preterm births</a>, we anticipated that exposure to fatal police violence during pregnancy might also influence preterm birth risk. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A pregnant Black woman." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386559/original/file-20210225-23-1b6aqad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386559/original/file-20210225-23-1b6aqad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386559/original/file-20210225-23-1b6aqad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386559/original/file-20210225-23-1b6aqad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386559/original/file-20210225-23-1b6aqad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386559/original/file-20210225-23-1b6aqad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386559/original/file-20210225-23-1b6aqad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Preterm birth is the leading cause of infant death.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/pregnant-african-american-mother-using-digital-royalty-free-image/526296623?adppopup=true">Tom Grill/JGI via Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>Examining the data</h2>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/ppe.12753">Our study</a> used California birth records to estimate pregnancy duration for the almost 4 million births statewide from 2007 to 2015. We then looked at anyone who was pregnant when a police killing occurred in their neighborhood, and compared them to their neighbors who were not exposed during their pregnancies. There is no single comprehensive <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001915">source of data</a> on police killings. We therefore used two sources of information about fatal police violence: California death records and <a href="https://fatalencounters.org/">the Fatal Encounters database</a>, a compilation of Americans killed during police interactions. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A protester stares down a police officer during a protest in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/394636/original/file-20210412-17-1ght9vj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/394636/original/file-20210412-17-1ght9vj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/394636/original/file-20210412-17-1ght9vj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/394636/original/file-20210412-17-1ght9vj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/394636/original/file-20210412-17-1ght9vj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/394636/original/file-20210412-17-1ght9vj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/394636/original/file-20210412-17-1ght9vj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A protester and a police officer during a protest in Brooklyn Center, Minn.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/staring-down-a-cop-a-protester-stands-at-the-line-where-news-photo/1232267708?adppopup=true">Christopher Mark Juhn/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We observed that when people were exposed to fatal police violence sometime during their pregnancies, there was a small increase in the hazard of delivering prematurely. Using the California death records, there was a 5% increased hazard of the baby being born between 34 and 36 weeks of gestation. There was a 3% increased hazard using the Fatal Encounters database. We didn’t observe associations between exposures to police violence and delivery even earlier, between 20 and 33 weeks of gestation. </p>
<p>Among Black women, we found that exposure to fatal police violence, especially when the victim was also Black, had an even stronger impact. When police killed a Black person in her own neighborhood, a Black mother’s hazard of delivering her child between weeks 32 and 33 increased 81% with the California death records. With the Fatal Encounters data, the hazard increased by 35%.</p>
<p>These findings are critical for a number of reasons. Preterm birth is the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2006-0860">leading cause of infant death</a> and may also carry implications for a child’s <a href="https://doi.org/%2010.1056/NEJMoa0706475">short- and long-term health</a>. Mothers of preterm children may experience adverse mental health outcomes like <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2016-012676">increased anxiety and fatigue</a> and use postnatal services less. </p>
<p>The cost of preterm birth is staggering, an estimated <a href="https://www.marchofdimes.org/peristats/documents/Cost_of_Prematurity_2019.pdf">US$25.2 billion</a> per year – about $65,000 per birth – with a substantial portion of that <a href="https://www.kff.org/medicaid/state-indicator/births-financed-by-medicaid">paid by Medicaid</a>. For families, preterm birth can present additional <a href="https://doi.org/10.1186/2191-1991-1-6">financial hardships</a>, including increased transportation costs for additional medical appointments and delayed return to work or missed work for employed parents. </p>
<p>The American Public Health Association <a href="https://www.apha.org/policies-and-advocacy/public-health-policy-statements/policy-database/2019/01/29/law-enforcement-violence">provides detailed guidance</a> on addressing police violence to improve health and health equity. This policy statement from public health researchers builds on work from community organizers and indicates what’s needed most is a shift in how government resources are allocated. It suggests that moving those resources away from criminalizing and policing marginalized communities to investing in their health, safety and well-being – through housing, food security, and quality health care and education systems – is the route to real change.</p>
<p>[<em>More than 104,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletter to understand the world.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=100Ksignup">Sign up today</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/153858/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>This study was supported by NIH grant 35 DP2HD080350; the University of California Firearm Violence Research Center; the University of California, Berkeley Committee on Research; and the Cheri Pies Dissertation Award.</span></em></p>A new study suggests exposure to police violence may affect the outcome of a pregnancy.Dana Goin, Postdoctoral Scholar, University of California, San FranciscoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1575372021-03-29T14:44:08Z2021-03-29T14:44:08ZLandmark study shows how child grants empower women in Brazil and South Africa<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391480/original/file-20210324-13-9o4x3q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C458%2C2955%2C1535&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Grants were found to help improve the health, including mental health, of women</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EFE-EPA/Aaron Ufumeli</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Since the mid-1990s, new approaches to poverty reduction have been introduced in countries across Africa, Asia and Latin America. Some have involved income transfer programmes that target poorer citizens based on various means tests. Most have targeted female caregivers, primarily mothers.</p>
<p>The most expansive child and family grants are in Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Argentina and South Africa, which has put in place the biggest social provision net in <a href="https://www.unicef.org/french/files/Social_Protection_for_Children_and_their_Families_-_A_Global_Overview.pdf">Africa</a>. </p>
<p>The focus of our study was on Brazil and South Africa, two of the countries that have the largest programmes globally. The programmes were all designed to enhance child welfare. But as academics who have studied social policy in these countries, we felt it was important to assess the impact of income transfer programmes that move beyond a focus on child well-being only. In particular, we set out to examine if such transfers also elevated women in their homes, societies and political systems.</p>
<p>We set <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1468018120981421">out to compare</a> South Africa’s <a href="https://www.sassa.gov.za/Pages/Child-Support-Grant.aspx">child support grant</a> and Brazil’s <a href="https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---asia/---ro-bangkok/---sro-new_delhi/documents/presentation/wcms_175274.pdf">Bolsa Família</a>. </p>
<p>Bolsa Família was launched in 2003 and is the largest cash transfer programme for children and families in the world, reaching more than <a href="https://www.centreforpublicimpact.org/case-study/bolsa-familia-in-brazil">46 million people a year</a> in Brazil. The country has a population of <a href="https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/brazil-population/">212 million people</a>. </p>
<p>South Africa’s child support grant system was launched in 1998. It makes monthly disbursements to 12.8 million children of a total population of <a href="https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/south-africa-population/">59.6 million people</a>. </p>
<p>Though they have different population sizes, Brazil and South Africa have a great deal in common. They have similar economic profiles and demographic characteristics. For example, among other similarities, they have the highest <a href="https://data.worldbank.org/">levels of income inequality</a>. </p>
<p>We conducted fieldwork in Doornkop, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/place/soweto">Soweto</a>, a large, densely populated black urban settlement which comprises one third of Johannesburg’s population. We also looked at three municipalities across two states of Northeast Brazil. </p>
<p>We <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1468018120981421">found</a> that regular income assistance boosted the self-esteem and agency of women recipients in both countries. Our findings also underscored the added benefits of Brazil’s cash transfer programme because it is embedded in a stronger public health and social service network than is the case in South Africa. </p>
<p>The broader lesson we took from our findings was that income transfer programmes must operate in deliberate coordination with ancillary social service institutions to deliver the maximum benefits for women’s empowerment.</p>
<h2>Three dimensions of empowerment</h2>
<p>Our analysis centred on the impact of child and family cash transfers on three dimensions of empowerment. </p>
<p>First, whether adult women beneficiaries experienced heightened independence in financial decision making; second, whether they experienced enhanced control over their bodies; and, finally, whether they experienced psycho-social growth. </p>
<p>This was a departure from the way in which empowerment is usually conceptualised in academic research where the focus tends to be on how and whether gendered norms are changing. Instead, inspired by economist and philosopher <a href="http://heterodoxnews.com/ajes/readings/Sen1999-intro.pdf">Amartya Sen</a>, we viewed empowerment as the expansion of assets and capabilities that give women more control over their lives, enhancing agency to eliminate inequities and to unleash greater freedoms.</p>
<p>We listened closely to the voices of women recipients, in focus groups, individual conversations and surveys. </p>
<p>In the case of Bolsa Família, we also set out to understand the broader context in which the child support grant system connected with other social services. Brazil attaches conditions to its child support grants. These include children having to attend school regularly, children under five receiving standard immunisations and prenatal care for pregnant women. </p>
<p>To cover all these bases we interviewed teachers and principals, social workers and primary health care officials. </p>
<p>In South Africa, grant receipt is largely unconditional, except that a child should attend school. We assessed the impact of the child support grant on a range of social and economic indicators such as school attendance, access to health and other services, food security, income and livelihoods and women’s empowerment. </p>
<h2>Enhancing women’s status</h2>
<p>Our findings suggest the social grants triggered positive dynamics for women’s empowerment in both countries, even though the programmes were not intended for this purpose. </p>
<p>For example, the cash transfers contributed to advancing the standing of women beneficiaries. We found that:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>women were more able to meet basic needs, which reduced stress because they were better able to cope with the precariousness of living in poverty;</p></li>
<li><p>most women recipients experienced heightened financial control and decision making vis-à-vis their partners. They withdrew the money themselves and exercised control over spending decisions; </p></li>
<li><p>the grants helped boost self esteem and agency. Beneficiaries in both countries reported an increased sense of status in their communities.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>In both countries the grants helped reduce poverty levels, particularly among the lower quintile of earners. Both systems helped reduce the depth of poverty among female versus male-headed households.</p>
<p>But it was also clear that Bolsa Família went further than the child support grant in some key areas. For example, it induced beneficiaries to get basic identity documents, which <a href="https://www.unicef.org/southafrica/media/1226/file/ZAF-removing-barriers-to-accessing-child-grants-2016.pdf">improved access to a wider system of health and social work services</a>. Having documents also meant that women could better navigate bureaucracies and gave them a sense of social recognition and hope. </p>
<h2>Next steps</h2>
<p>The findings suggest that social grants can unleash positive dynamics for women’s empowerment even though the programmes were not intended for this purpose. Cash transfers don’t in and of themselves transform gender roles. Nevertheless, they help improve the standing of women beneficiaries in important ways. These include increasing social recognition, reducing levels of poverty and increasing financial control, decision making and agency. </p>
<p>But there are areas in which both Brazil and South Africa could improve. Cash transfers need to be combined with active labour market policies that boost job creation, livelihoods support and social services to enhance the economic inclusion of women. </p>
<p>There need to be skills and training programmes, as well as the provision of childcare and transportation.</p>
<p>Finally, our findings point to the need for South Africa to emulate Brazil by getting other government ministries and agencies on board to coordinate the delivery of other social services alongside the grants to boost results.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/157537/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Leila Patel receives funding from the Department of Science and Technology and the National Research Foundation for her Chair in Welfare and Social Development.
</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Natasha Borges Sugiyama and Wendy Hunter do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Findings show that income transfer programmes must operate in deliberate coordination with ancillary social service institutions to deliver the maximum benefits for women’s empowerment.Leila Patel, Professor of Social Development Studies, University of JohannesburgNatasha Borges Sugiyama, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Wisconsin-MilwaukeeWendy Hunter, Professor of Government, The University of Texas at AustinLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1561662021-03-24T12:24:58Z2021-03-24T12:24:58ZHow to improve public health, the environment and racial equity all at once: Upgrade low-income housing<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391263/original/file-20210323-14-1udbk71.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=60%2C0%2C5716%2C3248&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Residents of the Jacob Riis Settlement in New York City hold photographs of leaks, mold, peeling paint and other issues during a community town hall meeting on March 7, 2019. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/HUDOfficialPublicHousingStays/e6212ab744324c418b7e836201494907/photo">AP Photo/Kathy Willens</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>During a presidential election debate on Oct. 22, 2020, former President Donald Trump <a href="https://earther.gizmodo.com/on-big-beautiful-windows-1845464927">railed against Democratic proposals to retrofit homes</a>. “They want to take buildings down because they want to make bigger windows into smaller windows,” he said. “As far as they’re concerned, if you had no window, it would be a lovely thing.” </p>
<p>What a difference five months makes. While replacing your big windows with small ones is not on the Biden-Harris administration’s agenda, increasing home energy efficiency is. Addressing these and other housing issues is critical for three of the new administration’s <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/priorities/">immediate priorities</a>: ending the COVID-19 pandemic, addressing climate change and tackling racial and economic inequality.</p>
<p>As an <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=iR82G3IAAAAJ&hl=en">environmental health researcher</a>, I have studied ways in which inadequate housing influences health and disproportionately affects low-income families and communities of color. In my view, retrofitting low-income housing in particular is a high-leverage way to tackle some of our nation’s most pressing health, social and environmental challenges.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/bKmfGI5Ogik?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The Oakland Ecoblock is a project to retrofit a low- to middle-income neighborhood in Oakland, California, moving it from high energy and water consumption to low.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Housing shapes everything</h2>
<p>The pandemic has spotlighted how directly housing affects people’s health. It’s intuitively clear that physical distancing is hard if your family lives in a few rooms. And studies have shown that crowded indoor environments, including houses and apartments, are <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.31756">high-risk settings for contracting COVID-19</a>. </p>
<p>Housing also is a substantial contributor to climate change. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1922205117">About 20% of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions</a> come from residential energy use. Large homes generally use more energy, but lower-income homes are often less energy-efficient, which makes them costly to heat and cool. </p>
<p>One recent survey found that between spring 2019 and spring 2020, 25% of low-income American households <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-020-00763-9">were unable to pay an energy bill</a>. Families may be forced to <a href="https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2019/01/f58/WIP-Energy-Burden_final.pdf">cut necessities like food or medicine</a> to pay energy bills, or endure <a href="https://nlihc.org/sites/default/files/Heat_Vulnerability_2020.pdf">unhealthy temperatures</a>. As changing climate lengthens summer, and there are more scorching hot days, those who lack air conditioning or can’t afford it are in danger. </p>
<p>Racial inequities in housing aren’t random. For generations, <a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/The-Color-of-Law/">discriminatory policies</a> kept Black and other minority households from purchasing homes in many neighborhoods. There are large racial gaps in both <a href="https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/files/currenthvspress.pdf">homeownership rates</a> and the availability of high-quality housing across the country. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391278/original/file-20210323-22-8kz0gb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Graphic promoting cleanliness, pest control and other healthy home strategies." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391278/original/file-20210323-22-8kz0gb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391278/original/file-20210323-22-8kz0gb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=729&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391278/original/file-20210323-22-8kz0gb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=729&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391278/original/file-20210323-22-8kz0gb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=729&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391278/original/file-20210323-22-8kz0gb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=916&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391278/original/file-20210323-22-8kz0gb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=916&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391278/original/file-20210323-22-8kz0gb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=916&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Maintenance is key to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Healthy Home Principles.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.hud.gov/sites/dfiles/HH/documents/8-Principles-Healthy-Home.pdf">HUD</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Potential policy solutions</h2>
<p>Now, for all of these reasons, housing is in the political spotlight. The Biden-Harris presidential platform included <a href="https://joebiden.com/clean-energy/">home energy efficiency retrofits</a>. The new American Rescue Plan Act, which President Biden signed into law on March 11, includes <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/1319/text#toc-H09101EF9DCCB42D3A37678885ACB92D4">housing provisions</a> meant to forestall an eviction crisis and to reduce energy insecurity. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Marcia Fudge has pledged to <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2021/03/10/marcia-fudge-hud-474945">prioritize fair housing</a>. </p>
<p>These efforts are all related. Energy-efficiency investments in low-income housing have broad ripple effects, including financial relief for residents, lower carbon emissions and healthier indoor environments.</p>
<p>But there are key questions. Will agencies address these issues as siloed challenges or in an integrated way? And will federal leaders and members of Congress see strategic investments in housing as a strategy that offers broad societal benefits? </p>
<h2>The state of low-income housing</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/ahs.html">Data from the American Housing Survey</a> demonstrates some of the challenges low-income households face. Many of the <a href="http://povertymeasurement.org/covid-19-poverty-dashboard/">more than 30 million Americans</a> who live below the poverty line crowd into smaller, older homes. Often these dwellings have structural deficiencies like pest infestation, mold, peeling paint and exposed wiring.</p>
<p><iframe id="X1wEv" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/X1wEv/2/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>Living in these environments creates <a href="https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2011.300119">health risks</a> from exposure to lead paint, allergens and indoor air pollution. The economic challenges of the pandemic, with people spending much more time at home, have heightened these risks.</p>
<p>Poor conditions also plague many chronically underfunded <a href="http://infrastructureweek.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Public-Housing-Is-Infrastructure-CLPHA.pdf">public housing developments</a>. Given how vulnerable many public housing residents are, I see upgrading these buildings as critical.</p>
<h2>The benefits of energy efficiency</h2>
<p>Well-designed energy-efficiency measures provide economic, health and climate benefits in single-family and multifamily homes, including in low-income housing. My research demonstrates both the promise and potential pitfalls of various measures. </p>
<p>For example, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/11/3/034017">better insulation </a> lowers electricity and fuel consumption. In turn, this saves money, improves outdoor air quality and reduces greenhouse gas emissions. </p>
<p>However, upgrades can be done well or badly. We found that weatherization alone, without other improvements, <a href="http://dx.doi.org/doi:%2010.1111/ina.12446">may actually increase indoor air pollution</a> in low income, multifamily housing, especially in homes where people smoke or cook frequently with gas stoves. That’s because steps like adding insulation and sealing cracks trap indoor air pollutants inside. Coupling weatherization with steps such as adding kitchen exhaust fans and high-efficiency particle filters in heating and air conditioning systems produces healthier results. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1369775153111068679"}"></div></p>
<h2>Are there win-win-win scenarios?</h2>
<p>If better housing saves money, makes residents healthier and more comfortable, improves air quality, decreases greenhouse gas emissions and reduces racial disparities, why don’t we have more of it? </p>
<p>One reason is that those who pay for improvements – landlords or government agencies – often aren’t the ones who directly benefit from living in a less drafty home with cleaner air. Likewise, it’s rare for health care providers to consider housing upgrades as an approved clinical intervention. </p>
<p>But that could change. A <a href="https://doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.2019.01569">recent study</a> showed that providing stable, affordable housing improved physical and mental health for both children and adults. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/00333549111260S110">Green building strategies</a> have been shown to <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2015.302793">improve health</a>, lessen asthma symptoms and reduce health care costs. Healthier kids miss less school and earn better grades. </p>
<p>[<em>Get the best of The Conversation, every weekend.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/weekly-highlights-61?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=weeklybest">Sign up for our weekly newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>Strategic federal investments could ultimately save taxpayers money and improve health. <a href="http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2019.6242">A 2020 study showed that</a> federal rental assistance – which helps families afford better housing – led to reduced emergency department visits for asthmatic children, saving money for the Medicaid system. Subsidized energy efficiency upgrades also increase property values, which helps address long-standing <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s12053-019-09820-z">racial disparities in wealth</a>. </p>
<p>The Department of Housing and Urban Development typically gets little notice from the public, especially amid a global pandemic when Americans are focused on vaccinations and the economy. But Secretary Fudge has an opportunity to spotlight housing as a lever for improving health, the environment and economic and racial equity. All without shrinking anyone’s windows.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/156166/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jonathan Levy receives funding from the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Barr Foundation, and Google.org. </span></em></p>Building retrofits are no joke: They make dwellings healthier and more energy-efficient. And when they’re done in low-income housing, they also reduce inequality.Jonathan Levy, Professor and Chair, Department of Environmental Health, Boston UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1527462021-02-02T13:11:31Z2021-02-02T13:11:31ZWhat is food insecurity?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/381339/original/file-20210129-13-1e60axw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=56%2C18%2C6174%2C4128&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">U.S. reliance on food assistance is rising during the coronavirus pandemic as more people grapple with economic hardship.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/mother-and-daughter-wait-for-assistance-at-universe-city-a-news-photo/1257635151?adppopup=true">Spencer Platt/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Among the many striking images from the pandemic is an <a href="https://www.reuters.com/news/picture/long-lines-at-food-banks-across-us-idUSRTX7EHU2">aerial photo showing cars</a> in seemingly endless rows lined up at a food bank in San Antonio, Texas.</p>
<p>A jarring awareness of <a href="https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/food-security-in-the-us/measurement/">food insecurity</a> in the U.S. has accompanied the health and financial concerns brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, with <a href="https://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-blog/covid-19-means-new-normal">record numbers of people visiting food banks</a> <a href="https://www.consumerreports.org/food/americans-turning-to-food-banks-during-the-pandemic/">for the first time</a>.</p>
<p>Even those not immediately in need were made increasingly aware of food insecurity in 2020, amid conversations not only of the economic fallout of the coronavirus, but also how structural racism has <a href="http://doi.org/10.1097/FCH.0000000000000183">disproportionately left Black and Hispanic households at risk</a>.</p>
<p>This conversation is overdue. Long consumed with <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/cdctv/diseaseandconditions/lifestyle/obesity-epidemic.html">the obesity epidemic</a>, Americans have found it harder to <a href="https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16101804">grapple with the issue of food insecurity</a> as a wealthy nation.</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=VmCnHgYAAAAJ&hl=en">researcher of food policy</a>, I have seen how people have focused more attention on addressing the issue of food insecurity in recent years. In 2000, just seven research articles with “food insecurity” in the title or abstract were listed in the leading database of biomedical literature. The total rose to 137 in 2010 and to 994 by 2020.</p>
<p>I am currently conducting the first <a href="https://www.supershelfmn.org/evaluation">National Institutes of Health-funded study of the charitable food system</a>, which includes <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-food-banks-help-americans-who-have-trouble-making-ends-meet-we-can-workshop-this-headline-soon-148150">food banks</a> – nonprofits that procure, store and distribute food, usually to smaller agencies – and food pantries, which distribute food directly to households that need it.</p>
<p>Although awareness of food insecurity is growing, it is important to understand what is meant by the term and how it fits with other food access concepts, such as hunger and food sovereignty. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="An aerial view shows volunteers loading cars with turkeys and other food." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/381332/original/file-20210129-23-ffi0u4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/381332/original/file-20210129-23-ffi0u4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381332/original/file-20210129-23-ffi0u4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381332/original/file-20210129-23-ffi0u4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381332/original/file-20210129-23-ffi0u4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381332/original/file-20210129-23-ffi0u4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381332/original/file-20210129-23-ffi0u4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Laid-off Walt Disney World employees line up in cars at a food distribution center in Orlando, Florida.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/in-this-aerial-view-from-a-drone-volunteers-load-cars-with-news-photo/1230097449?adppopup=true">Paul Hennessy/NurPhoto via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What is food insecurity?</h2>
<p>According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture), <a href="https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/food-security-in-the-us/measurement/">food insecurity</a> occurs when households are unable to acquire adequate food because they have insufficient money and other resources.</p>
<p>Food insecurity is measured at the household level and reflects limited access to food. This makes it <a href="https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/food-security-in-the-us/measurement/">different from hunger</a>, which is a physiological condition experienced by an individual. The USDA does not measure hunger in the U.S. Instead, the agency sees it as a consequence of people having limited access to food.</p>
<p>The USDA has <a href="https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/food-security-in-the-us/survey-tools/">measured food insecurity</a> for 25 years. This metric captures both the uncertainty of not knowing where one’s next meal is coming from and the disruptions of normal eating patterns and reductions in food intake.</p>
<p>Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the prevalence of food insecurity peaked at <a href="https://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/pub-details/?pubid=45021">just under 15% of households</a> in 2011. Rates then steadily declined each year through 2019, when just over <a href="https://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/pub-details/?pubid=99281">1 in 10 households</a> reported experiencing food insecurity. </p>
<p>But then came 2020.</p>
<p>Although official statistics have not been released yet, early evidence suggests that <a href="https://www.ipr.northwestern.edu/documents/reports/ipr-rapid-research-reports-pulse-hh-data-10-june-2020.pdf">food insecurity rates hit unprecedented levels</a>, affecting perhaps <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/aepp.13100">17 million more</a> Americans than in 2019. <a href="http://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMp2005638">Households with children</a> were struck at <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2020/07/09/about-14-million-children-in-the-us-are-not-getting-enough-to-eat/">alarmingly high</a> rates, exacerbated by the closure of schools and child care facilities. In particular, Black and Hispanic families with children were disproportionately affected. </p>
<p><iframe id="Kneyc" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/Kneyc/1/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<h2>Food justice, sovereignty and apartheid</h2>
<p>That Black and Hispanic households were hit the hardest by food insecurity during the COVID-19 pandemic is part of a bigger picture. <a href="https://www.rwjf.org/en/library/research/2017/05/what-is-health-equity-.html">Food insecurity is fundamentally an issue of health equity</a> – the fair and just opportunity to be as healthy as possible without facing obstacles like poverty and discrimination. Even in normal times, food insecurity <a href="https://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/pub-details/?pubid=99281">disproportionately affects low-income households</a>, Black and Hispanic families, female-headed households and families with children.</p>
<p>Families struggling with food insecurity face not only insufficient food, but also <a href="https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2020/march/food-insecure-households-score-lower-on-diet-quality-compared-to-food-secure-households/">insufficient nutritious food</a>. Because of this, people who are food-insecure have higher risks of a range of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.2015.0645">diet-related chronic diseases</a> such as diabetes and hypertension.</p>
<p>Food insecurity can be exacerbated by living in low-income areas without access to sources of healthy and affordable food. These areas have often been referred to as “<a href="https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/food-access-research-atlas/documentation/#definitions">food deserts</a>,” although this metaphor is being phased out by <a href="https://www.changefood.org/video/ladonna-redmond-food-justice-democracy/">food justice advocates</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physbeh.2018.02.032">researchers</a>, and <a href="https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2013/03/11/updated-web-tool-maps-us-food-access-greater-detail">government agencies</a>.</p>
<p>Another term that has emerged – “<a href="https://pubmed-ncbi-nlm-nih-gov.ezp1.lib.umn.edu/29135909/">food swamp</a>” – describes neighborhoods where sources of unhealthy foods outnumber sources of healthy food – for example, the number of fast-food outlets outnumbers grocery stores.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, several other terms bring civil rights into U.S. urban food activism. “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-015-9625-8">Food justice</a>” is a food movement rooted in addressing class and race issues, often through local community food production. “<a href="https://viacampesina.org/en/the-jakarta-call/">Food sovereignty</a>” originates from indigenous and global agrarian communities, and refers to the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems.</p>
<p>Another term, “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/may/15/food-apartheid-food-deserts-racism-inequality-america-karen-washington-interview">food apartheid</a>,” even more explicitly identifies structural racism as a root cause of food-related inequalities.</p>
<p>What these terms – food sovereignty, food justice and food apartheid – have in common is that they prod citizens, researchers and policymakers to move beyond issues of geographic food access and “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0020731420913184">how to feed the poor</a>” and instead focus on how food systems can be reformed to address fundamental causes of food insecurity and health inequities.</p>
<p>[<em>The Conversation’s newsletter explains what’s going on with the coronavirus pandemic. <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=coronavirus-going-on">Subscribe now</a>.</em>]</p>
<h2>A new era</h2>
<p>Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the Trump administration tightened restrictions on <a href="https://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/work-requirements-policies">SNAP benefits</a>. Formerly known as food stamps, SNAP is the largest of the federal food programs, providing monthly benefits to supplement the food budget in income-eligible families. Food insecurity was a critical part of policy discussions of SNAP restrictions.</p>
<p>But the issue of food insecurity has seemingly seeped more broadly into the public consciousness in conversations about racial justice, economic hardship, school reopening, pandemic preparedness and the food supply chain that ramped up in 2020 – conversations that are continuing in 2021. </p>
<p>The recent rise in food insecurity has prompted a response that has at times <a href="https://www.startribune.com/minneapolis-pop-up-food-shelves-transition-to-meet-neighborhoods-needs-after-floyd-death/571369952/">overwhelmed food banks and food pantries</a> and the providers of free meals. But more sustainable solutions, such as <a href="https://www.povertycenter.columbia.edu/antipoverty-policies-programs">anti-poverty policies</a>, are needed to address the problem’s root causes.</p>
<p>Food insecurity is not a new problem, but the current challenges come in an era in which more people are aware of the problem. My hope is that the long-overdue public exposure of America’s fault lines can be the catalyst for new efforts.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/152746/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Caitlin Caspi receives funding from the National Institutes of Health. </span></em></p>A food policy researcher helps make sense of the lexicon of US food policy terms, and explains how they relate to racial justice.Caitlin Caspi, Professor of Public Health, University of ConnecticutLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1528822021-01-15T14:52:32Z2021-01-15T14:52:32ZNeighborhoods with MLK streets are poorer than national average and highly segregated, study reveals<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378887/original/file-20210114-21-tlqd2o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C1%2C1000%2C628&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The United States has 955 streets named after Martin Luther King Jr..</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/martin-luther-king-jr-drive-atlanta-6365791?src=7rbEUnF1xxKFBnhxbIdd2A-1-0">Katherine Welles/Shutterstock</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/research-brief-83231">Research Brief</a> is a short take about interesting academic work.</em></p>
<h2>The big idea</h2>
<p>Poverty rates are almost double the national average in areas surrounding streets named after Martin Luther King Jr., according to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-020-10291-4">our study</a>, and educational attainment is much lower. </p>
<p>Our geography research, published in the <a href="https://www.springer.com/journal/10708">GeoJournal</a> in September 2020, analyzed the racial makeup and economic well-being of 22,286 census blocks in the U.S. with roadways bearing the slain civil rights leader’s name. Streets named after Martin Luther King typically run through multiple census blocks; we identified a total of 955 such streets in the United States.</p>
<p>The areas surrounding MLK streets are predominantly African American, with very few white residents, we found. This is particularly true in the South and Midwest. A notable exception includes California, where MLK neighborhoods have seen a recent increase in their Latino population.</p>
<h2>Why it matters</h2>
<p>American cities began naming streets for the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. after his 1968 assassination to <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/naming-streets-martin-luther-king-jr-easy-road-derek-alderman/e/10.4324/9780203621622-13">commemorate the civil rights movement and King’s fight against social inequality</a>. Chicago was the first. In 1968, Mayor Richard Daley renamed 14 miles of <a href="https://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20130121/chicago/chicagos-martin-luther-king-jr-drive-road-through-history">Grand Boulevard, in the historically Black South Side</a>, as Martin Luther King Jr. Drive.</p>
<p>Today cities in 41 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico have streets named for King. </p>
<p>According to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/0033-0124.00256">the University of Tennessee geographer Derek Alderman</a>, the streets that bear his name were selected from areas that have higher African American populations than citywide averages. MLK avenues, boulevards and drives are, the journalist Jonathan Tilove once wrote, “<a href="https://www.abebooks.com/9781400060801/Along-Martin-Luther-King-Travels-140006080X/plp">Black America’s Main Street</a>.”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378906/original/file-20210114-22-1m4vyc8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Black-and-white image of Black people cheering for Nelson Mandela." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378906/original/file-20210114-22-1m4vyc8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378906/original/file-20210114-22-1m4vyc8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378906/original/file-20210114-22-1m4vyc8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378906/original/file-20210114-22-1m4vyc8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378906/original/file-20210114-22-1m4vyc8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378906/original/file-20210114-22-1m4vyc8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378906/original/file-20210114-22-1m4vyc8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">When South African civil rights icon Nelson Mandela visited Boston in 1990, his motorcade drove down King Boulevard through a crowd of well-wishers.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/well-wishers-line-martin-luther-king-boulevard-as-nelson-news-photo/454921889?adppopup=true">Mark Wilson/The Boston Globe via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Most of America’s MLK neighborhoods, from <a href="https://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/story/news/2018/03/07/cleaved-concrete/395087002/">east Montgomery</a>, Alabama, to Harlem in New York City, were born of <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2781105?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">legal or de facto racial segregation</a>. And in the second half of the 20th century, they experienced the sharpest decline in urban industry, sending local jobs from the cities to suburbs. </p>
<p>These historic events first caused, then structurally perpetuated, deprivation in MLK neighborhoods. Concentrated urban poverty <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2781105">affected the funding required to support schools, hospitals and other community services</a>, especially after the economic recession of the 1970s. In many cities, the <a href="http://sk.sagepub.com/books/racism-from-slavery-to-advanced-capitalism">sinking socioeconomic status of African Americans</a> was compounded by <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2017.05.001">government neglect of their neighborhoods</a>, leading to property devaluation, industrial pollution and disrepair. </p>
<p>The result is that MLK neighborhoods have become what Alderman calls a “racialized” landscape. Systematically ignored for <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-13/why-it-s-so-hard-to-invest-in-black-neighborhoods">investment and government services</a>, they are now negatively stereotyped as marginal places where <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/1519837">poverty, disorder, dereliction and crime are considered normal</a>.</p>
<h2>What other research is being done</h2>
<p>Our study builds on <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/0033-0124.00256">Alderman’s 2000 investigation on MLK streets</a> by revealing that the neighborhoods around them are highly racially segregated. </p>
<p>But they are also vibrant commercial districts. </p>
<p>In 2007, geographer <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/42956175?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">Matthew Mitchelson and co-authors</a> analyzed businesses on streets named after King, examining their numbers, annual sales and staff size. His study concluded these businesses are comparable in terms of revenue and jobs provided to those located on other commercial arteries – namely, Main Streets and streets named after President John F. Kennedy.</p>
<p>Mitchelson’s analysis also found that MLK streets have proportionally more churches and government offices than Main Streets or JFK streets.</p>
<h2>What still isn’t known</h2>
<p>Research on <a href="https://theconversation.com/natural-disasters-and-people-on-the-margins-the-hidden-story-100251%22%22">urban resilience</a> suggests the marginalization of MLK neighborhoods could make their residents more vulnerable to natural disasters and <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-urban-poor-have-been-hit-hard-by-coronavirus-we-must-ask-who-cities-are-designed-to-serve-138707">pandemics like the coronavirus</a>, but this connection has yet to be studied. </p>
<p>Finally, the arrival of Latinos to MLK neighborhoods left us wondering: Will increasing diversity bring an end to the negative stereotyping of these areas – or simply change those stereotypes?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/152882/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shrinidhi Ambinakudige receives funding from USDA. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sweta Tiwari does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>US cities began naming streets in Black neighborhoods for Martin Luther King Jr. after his 1968 assassination. Researchers studying these areas 50 years later found entrenched deprivation.Sweta Tiwari, Post Doctoral Fellow in Geospatial Institute, Saint Louis UniversityShrinidhi Ambinakudige, Professor, Geosciences Department, Mississippi State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1522952021-01-15T13:22:40Z2021-01-15T13:22:40ZWhite supremacists who stormed US Capitol are only the most visible product of racism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378896/original/file-20210114-22-18kdcsr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=6%2C13%2C4486%2C2977&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Known white supremacists have been identified among the Trump supporters at the Capitol on Jan. 6.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/president-donald-trump-supporters-gather-outside-the-news-photo/1230468360?adppopup=true">Probal Rashid/LightRocket via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Among the Trump supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 were members of <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/several-well-known-hate-groups-identified-at-capitol-riot">right-wing groups</a>, including the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and Three Percenters. </p>
<p>The increasing violence and visibility of these groups have turned them into symbols of white supremacy and racism. They were involved in the deadly <a href="https://time.com/charlottesville-white-nationalist-rally-clashes/">Unite the Right</a> march in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/08/22/portland-police-far-right-protest/">street clashes</a> with racial justice protesters in Portland, Oregon, last year. At a Trump rally in Washington, D.C., in December, <a href="https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/protesters-rip-set-fire-to-blm-signs-at-two-dc-churches-organizers-respond/2507057/">Black Lives Matter banners</a> were torn from two historically Black churches and destroyed. The Proud Boys’ leader has been <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/01/proud-boys-leader-arrested-charged-burning-church-black-lives-matter-banner.html">criminally charged in those acts</a>.</p>
<p>Many Proud Boys <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/09/30/who-proud-boys-group-mentioned-debate-has-violent-history/5868406002/">reject the label “white supremacist”</a>, arguing their aim is to “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-1e9gHews8&t=47s">save America</a>” and to defend “<a href="https://www.wisconsinwatch.org/2017/11/proud-boys-group-wisconsin/">Western values</a>.” </p>
<p>White supremacy was itself a longstanding Western value. And white people don’t have to be white supremacists to benefit from the ways it still shapes American society.</p>
<h2>White supremacy, then and now</h2>
<p>As an ideology, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2019/12/27/war-races-how-hateful-ideology-echoes-through-american-history/">white supremacy</a> is the belief that white people are inherently superior to people of color. It relies on the notion that distinct races of people exist, and ranks those categorized as “white” at the top of the <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2F0003-066X.60.1.16">racial hierarchy</a>. </p>
<p>For hundreds of years, American leaders overtly embraced white supremacy. It was <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14623520601056240?src=recsys">used to rationalize</a> the genocide of Native Americans and the enslavement of Africans and their descendants from the Colonial period to the 19th century. In an 1858 debate, <a href="https://www.aaihs.org/this-is-a-country-for-white-men-white-supremacy-and-u-s-politics/">President Abraham Lincoln said</a>, “I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races.” </p>
<p>Known for abolishing slavery, Lincoln’s position may come as a surprise. But many U.S. abolitionists wanted <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/02/15/805991106/early-novel-written-by-free-black-woman-called-out-racism-among-abolitionists">white people to maintain power</a> in government and everyday life, including after Black people were freed from bondage.</p>
<p>After abolition in 1865, white supremacy continued in official and unofficial ways. It drove the <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/early-20th-century-us/jim-crow-laws">legal racial segregation of Jim Crow</a> and the <a href="https://www.npr.org/2017/05/03/526655831/a-forgotten-history-of-how-the-u-s-government-segregated-america">banking practice of redlining</a>, which robbed Black families of the loans necessary to buy homes in certain neighborhoods. White supremacy also underlay the <a href="https://www.history.com/news/how-boarding-schools-tried-to-kill-the-indian-through-assimilation">forced assimilation</a> and <a href="https://www.history.com/news/native-americans-genocide-united-states">killing of Native Americans</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378866/original/file-20210114-18-ft2k8v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Black-and-white image of Native students in Victorian dresses holding violins" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378866/original/file-20210114-18-ft2k8v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378866/original/file-20210114-18-ft2k8v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378866/original/file-20210114-18-ft2k8v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378866/original/file-20210114-18-ft2k8v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378866/original/file-20210114-18-ft2k8v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378866/original/file-20210114-18-ft2k8v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378866/original/file-20210114-18-ft2k8v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Boarding schools for Native American youths, like Montana’s Fort Shaw, cut students off from their culture and taught them that white values, practices and dress were American culture.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/7uuXPBbAFMJEkDEsf7TdYNrBhJxDVN4YlfMyEDW6sbYnmjNvuUvPGj53-dZKoihceFa6bIjUh3DSfwKhLv9o63hN2KqYIbvUQQedz0dUaZTFfS2-4EDv5AxB_E3iAgWTg2pCRKX--USTjv_Lg2UAPN5dRaqyJ8nD6IbAOw">Montana Historical Society Photo Archives</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Outright racist policies were banned after the civil rights era of the 1960s. But <a href="https://theconversation.com/after-the-civil-rights-era-white-americans-failed-to-support-systemic-change-to-end-racism-will-they-now-141954">systemic racism remained</a>. Today’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/black-americans-mostly-left-behind-by-progress-since-dr-kings-death-89956">well-documented inequalities</a> between Black and white Americans in savings, longevity, home ownership and health are directly related to the white supremacist hierarchy created centuries ago. </p>
<h2>Hidden white supremacy</h2>
<p>White people need not endorse white supremacy to benefit from this hierarchy. As <a href="https://www.pbs.org/race/000_About/002_04-background-03-04.htm">psychologist Beverly Tatum</a> has explained, the privileges afforded to whiteness are so much a part of the structure of U.S. society that many white people don’t even notice them. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Woman wearing a mask holds a sign likening COVID-19 to racism – 'assume you have it'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378861/original/file-20210114-15-rc98jl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378861/original/file-20210114-15-rc98jl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378861/original/file-20210114-15-rc98jl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378861/original/file-20210114-15-rc98jl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378861/original/file-20210114-15-rc98jl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378861/original/file-20210114-15-rc98jl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378861/original/file-20210114-15-rc98jl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Decrying the insidiousness of white supremacy at a protest march.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/woman-wearing-a-mask-holds-a-sign-likening-covid-19-to-news-photo/1229553338?adppopup=true">Stephen Zenner/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For example, a white man is unlikely to be <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/17/nyregion/bloomberg-stop-and-frisk-new-york.html">stopped and frisked by police</a>. A white high school student probably won’t be asked if she’s in the right room on the first day of an <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/12/the-race-gap-in-high-school-honors-classes/431751/">honors class</a>. And it likely won’t occur to either to reflect on these privileges.</p>
<p>A white person is similarly unlikely to wonder why no one ever asks “<a href="https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2017/08/opinion/where-im-really-from/">but where are you really from?</a>” after introducing themselves. And a white child likely won’t notice that nearly <a href="https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/8/26/20829771/slavery-textbooks-history">everyone in their textbooks</a> looks like them.</p>
<p>All of these affronts, both minor and major, are experiences many people of color face throughout their lives.</p>
<p>Not noticing one’s racial privilege does not make a white person a white supremacist. That racial privilege affects countless aspects of daily life does, however, mean that U.S. society is still shaped by white supremacy.</p>
<h2>All people have a racial identity</h2>
<p><a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2006-10123-002">Research shows</a> that white people must recognize and understand how they benefit from white supremacy to combat it. Doing so necessitates an awareness of one’s own racial identity – which is <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=OL0i8HAAAAAJ&hl=en">something I study</a> as a developmental psychologist. </p>
<p>In general, white people easily <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2012-31370-007">identify as white</a> on official forms or in research settings. But when asked about their racial identity – that is, the way they understand themselves in terms of race and their experiences as a member of their racial group – <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14780887.2011.586449">they often have trouble answering</a>. </p>
<p>For example, in ongoing interview-based research with white teenagers, <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=SnhdUXcAAAAJ&hl=en">my colleagues</a> and I ask questions like, “How important is being white?” and “What does it mean to be white?” The teens generally claim their race “doesn’t really matter.” </p>
<p>This response reflects a tendency to think of whiteness as <a href="https://oxfordre.com/education/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.001.0001/acrefore-9780190264093-e-5">normal and invisible</a>, and race as something “other” people have.</p>
<p>Yet many of these same white teenagers also told us stories of witnessing racism in their schools and within their friend groups. They can see and name obvious racism, but most do not recognize their own white privilege as a part of the same system. </p>
<p>For that reason, although racism is often seen only as prejudiced beliefs and behaviors – as embodied by the Proud Boys and other such groups – it is better defined as <a href="https://www.pbs.org/race/000_About/002_04-background-03-04.htm">a system of advantage based on race</a>. Most teenagers in our study do not endorse racism, but they are all growing up in, and benefiting from, a society shaped by it. </p>
<p>If and how white people acknowledge that fact informs their own identities – and affects the society they forge. Research shows people who recognize the history of racism are <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797612451466">more likely</a> to identify racism today, in both overt forms like the violence at the Capitol and in more covert daily forms.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.wisconsinwatch.org/2017/11/proud-boys-group-wisconsin/">Extremists like the Proud Boys</a> are putting American white supremacy in the headlines today, just as the Ku Klux Klan did 50 years ago. But they are merely its most visible product.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/152295/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ursula Moffitt receives funding from the National Science Foundation. </span></em></p>Extremist groups like the Proud Boys get white supremacy into headlines. But all white people benefit from white supremacy, whether they know it or not.Ursula Moffitt, Postdoctoral Fellow in Psychology, Northwestern UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1502962020-11-19T14:38:03Z2020-11-19T14:38:03ZSouth Africa’s main opposition party caught in an unenviable political bind<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370049/original/file-20201118-15-12vkytv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A real problem for the Democratic Alliance is that it cannot hope to displace the dominant African National Congress.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EFE-EPA/Kevin Sutherland</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The results of the recent <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-by-elections-in-south-africa-say-about-the-ruling-party-and-the-state-of-opposition-150314">municipal by-elections</a> have confirmed that the Democratic Alliance (DA), South Africa’s leading opposition party, is in trouble. Whereas the governing African National Congress (ANC) retained 64 wards, won six new ones and lost just two, the DA retained 14, won just two new ones, and lost nine, mainly to smaller opposition parties. And the party has been making headlines for all the wrong reasons.</p>
<p>Although it ran a slick virtual federal congress <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2020-10-31-south-africas-slickest-political-show-goes-virtual-in-impressive-style/">in October</a> at which <a href="https://www.pa.org.za/person/john-henry-steenhuisen/">John Steenhuisen</a> trounced <a href="https://www.news24.com/news24/southafrica/news/my-youth-age-and-race-are-a-great-advantage-for-any-leader-mbali-ntuli-20201026">Mbali Ntuli</a> by securing the <a href="https://ewn.co.za/2020/11/01/john-steenhuisen-elected-da-s-new-leader">backing of 80%</a> of those who voted in a party leadership contest, it attracted <a href="https://www.news24.com/news24/columnists/adriaanbasson/adriaan-basson-why-is-the-da-afraid-to-let-ntuli-debate-steenhuisen-in-public-20201026">negative headlines</a> by preventing the pair from holding virtual “town halls” in the lead-up to the vote. It then restricted viewership of the two contestants’ debate at the congress itself to its members, rather than to the public at large. </p>
<p>The congress also turned down the proposal that the party appoint a deputy leader, a position which Ntuli might confidently have been expected to fill (and thereby posture as future leader-in-waiting).</p>
<p>This congress took place following a string of high-profile resignations by prominent <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/moodey-resigns-from-da-laments-partys-defence-of-white-interests-4a7a1af0-ef42-4a11-8bbf-a47cd7525113">black members</a> of the party since <a href="https://theconversation.com/imposter-syndrome-explains-why-first-black-leader-of-south-africas-main-opposition-party-quit-125826">the resignation as leader</a> of Mmusi Maimane after the 2019 general election. The party registered a first decline in its percentage vote <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-2019-poll-showed-dangerous-signs-of-insiders-and-outsiders-121758">since 1994</a>.</p>
<p>Steenhuisen’s election was matched by the congress simultaneously making a contentious change to its policies. It now <a href="https://www.da.org.za/2020/09/da-is-the-party-of-economic-inclusion">renounces the use of “race”</a> as a means of identifying and empowering categories of people who suffered historical disadvantage under apartheid. This was merely the latest shift in the party’s long-running agonising about how to tackle racial disadvantage.</p>
<h2>Politics of ‘race’</h2>
<p>First introduced during the years of <a href="https://www.uj.ac.za/newandevents/Pages/DAmovestoattractmoreblackvoters20111034.aspx">Helen Zille’s leadership</a>, in a bid to attract black support and enable the DA to grow, the forswearing of “race” at the congress was now hailed as a return to <a href="https://theconversation.com/liberalism-in-south-africa-isnt-only-for-white-people-or-black-people-who-want-to-be-white-125236">liberal principles</a>. The party’s head of policy, <a href="https://www.pa.org.za/person/amanda-ngwenya/">Gwen Ngwenya</a>, <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2020-09-08-da-policy-conference-ditching-race-based-policies-amid-a-racial-storm/">described the move</a> as the abandonment of</p>
<blockquote>
<p>a false binary option of choosing between non-racialism or redress.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Instead, she said, the party was introducing an economic justice policy which would implement both (basically by substituting educational, social background and income criteria for “race”).</p>
<p>Since the congress, the DA has been widely accused of <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-south-africas-white-liberals-dodge-honest-debates-about-race-127846">“race denialism” </a>. For instance, University of Johannesburg professor of politics Steven Friedman, commenting on the message of the US elections for South Africa, argued that the elections showed it was impossible to make non-racialism a reality if race and racism <a href="https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/opinion/columnists/2020-11-10-steven-friedman-growing-racial-divide-in-us-sends-important-message-to-sa/">remain a reality</a>. </p>
<p>He did not state it explicitly, but this was a clear dig at the DA. Yet Friedman might well be one of those who in a university context might be happy to argue that “class” criteria should trump “racial” ones for admission of students. In short, as sociologist Gerry Mare has indicated in a celebrated book, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Declassified-Moving-Beyond-Dead-End-Africa/dp/1431420204"><em>Declassified</em></a>, there is a fundamental contradiction involved in attempting to overcome apartheid-era disadvantage by using apartheid era “race thinking”.</p>
<p>This is a contradiction which progressives continue to wrestle with, and the DA cannot be fairly criticised for attempting to overcome it in policy terms. </p>
<h2>The DA’s dilemma</h2>
<p>Critics would probably accept this but would then likely introduce a qualification: the DA has introduced the change in policy for the wrong reasons. In other words, it is attempting to assuage white racism in the party by eliminating racial criteria from its policy for counteracting historical disadvantage. “Heads you win”, would claim the DA, “tails we lose”.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, there is a substantial issue here. The very real problem for the DA is that it can never aspire to displacing the dominant ANC, whether on its own or as part of a wider opposition coalition, without attracting more black votes.</p>
<p>Under the leadership of <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/anthony-james-tony-leon">Tony Leon</a>, it established itself as the major party of opposition by capturing the racialised constituency of the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/national-party-np">National Party</a>, leading ultimately to the <a href="https://theconversation.com/partys-woes-signify-historical-dilemma-of-south-africas-liberals-126358">latter’s demise</a>. Yet the DA’s 1999 <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/sundayindependent/das-history-of-identity-crises-1611459">“fight back!”</a> electoral slogan inevitably alienated potential black voters. This forced the party to realise that its only sure route to growth was attracting black African support.</p>
<p>This was to become the project of the Zille leadership, and was to prove not unsuccessful. The DA support base continued to grow through <a href="https://pari.org.za/book-launch-election-2019-change-and-stability-in-south-africas-democracy/">successive elections</a>. A significant segment of primarily black middle class support became attached to the party’s base among racial minorities. This provided the platform for Maimane’s elevation to the leadership.</p>
<p>Yet it’s now clear that the experiment has gone badly awry. Although the DA can correctly claim to have become the most racially diverse party in South Africa, it is regularly <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2016-01-28-das-black-leaders-live-with-racism/">accused of racism</a>. This may or not be fair, but it’s politics.</p>
<p>The outcome of the DA’s recent turmoil has been a classically South African one: the formation by former DA Johannesburg mayor Herman Mashaba of what is, in essence, a black liberal party (<a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/herman-mashaba-launches-new-party-promises-to-bring-back-the-scorpions-88402191-dd03-43d9-b239-aed5b1649c36">Action SA</a>) to match the “white” one. </p>
<p>The omens are that this will drain black support from the DA as well as attracting votes of blacks wanting to desert the ANC. Its rise will confirm the DA on what many see as its likely future trajectory: as primarily representing South Africa’s racial minorities and defending its redoubt in the Western Cape in the <a href="https://www.gov.za/speeches/electoral-commission-welcomes-start-public-consultations-draft-wards-local-government">2021 local government elections</a>.</p>
<h2>Unenviable position</h2>
<p>The problem for the DA is not one of policy. There is real substance in its commitment to substituting “non-racial” for racial criteria for overcoming the historical disadvantages associated with being black. The real challenge is the one that has always confronted liberalism in South Africa’s racially structured society: liberalism has never been able to detach itself from its image among blacks that it is a cover for white interests and white “leadership”. </p>
<p>An established narrative argues that <a href="https://iop.harvard.edu/fellows/lindiwe-mazibuko">Lindiwe Mazibuko</a>, Mmusi Maimane, <a href="https://www.gov.za/about-government/contact-directory/public-works-and-infrastructure-ministry/patricia-de-lille-ms">Patricia De Lille</a>, Herman Mashaba – black people who all achieved leadership positions within the DA – were all undermined by a <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/sundayindependent/analysis/da-is-still-looking-after-white-interests-14949941">backroom white leadership cabal</a>. The cabal allegedly wanted to control them as puppets on a string. So now, the narrative continues, under Steenhuizen, decent man that he may be, the party is simply reverting to type: a party for whites, led by whites.</p>
<p>Although the DA seemingly possesses an uncanny ability to shoot itself in the foot, its real dilemma is how to escape a vicious circle. When it sought to attract black voters by <a href="https://www.da.org.za/2018/08/das-position-on-economic-empowerment">endorsing</a> <a href="http://www.economic.gov.za/about-us/programmes/economic-policy-development/b-bbee">“black empowerment”</a>, it alienated white voters to the right and classic liberals. When it abandons “racial criteria” as a proxy for disadvantage, it alienates its potential support base among the black middle class.</p>
<p>The DA occupies an unenviable political space from which there is no obvious route of escape.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/150296/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Roger Southall does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The problem for the Democratic Alliance is not one of policy. There is real substance in its commitment to substituting racial criteria for overcoming historical disadvantage.Roger Southall, Professor of Sociology, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1462732020-09-24T12:24:58Z2020-09-24T12:24:58ZHomes in Black and Latino neighborhoods still undervalued 50 years after US banned using race in real estate appraisals<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/359615/original/file-20200923-20-soexi9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C11%2C3847%2C2492&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Real estate prices are still related to a neighborhood's racial composition, despite laws prohibiting the explicit consideration of race in appraisals. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/research-brief-83231">Research Brief</a> is a short take about interesting academic work.</em></p>
<h2>The big idea</h2>
<p>Racial inequality in home values is greater today than it was 40 years ago, with <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y42pKiIIJBU">homes in white neighborhoods appreciating $200,000</a> more since 1980 than comparable homes in similar communities of color. </p>
<p>Our <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spaa033">new research on home appraisals</a> shows neighborhood racial composition still drives unequal home values, despite laws that forbid real estate professionals from explicitly using race when evaluating a property’s worth. Published in the journal <a href="https://academic.oup.com/socpro">Social Problems</a>, our study finds this growing inequality results from both historical policies and contemporary practices. </p>
<p>In the 1930s, the federal government institutionalized a process for evaluating how much a property was worth. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/03/28/redlining-was-banned-50-years-ago-its-still-hurting-minorities-today/">Often called redlining</a>, this process used neighborhood racial and socioeconomic composition to determine home values. Homes in white communities were deemed more valuable than identical dwellings in communities of color.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Y42pKiIIJBU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Redlining has been illegal for 43 years – but it is still depressing the value of Black and Latino neighborhoods.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Legislative action in the late 1960s and 1970s prohibited this practice. But the law allowed appraisers to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spaa033">use past sale prices to determine home values</a>. Our research shows how using old, race-based sale prices ensured appraisers continued to define homes in white neighborhoods as worth more than similar homes in Black and Latino communities. Racism was baked into the system.</p>
<p>Real estate professionals compound these historical inequalities by assuming communities of color <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/2332649218755178">are undesirable</a>, even when real estate demand suggests otherwise.</p>
<h2>Why it matters</h2>
<p>For most U.S. families, their home is their greatest asset. As their home appreciates in value, <a href="https://socialequity.duke.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/what-we-get-wrong.pdf">their wealth increases</a>, enabling them to fund their retirement, their children’s college educations or unexpected expenses like large medical bills.</p>
<p>The racial inequality in home values and appreciation rates has <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesleadershipforum/2012/12/10/how-home-ownership-keeps-blacks-poorer-than-whites/#4e3d27cc4cce">created a large and increasing racial wealth gap</a>. On average, U.S. <a href="https://kinder.rice.edu/urbanedge/2020/09/21/housing-cost-residential-segregation-unfair-advantages-whites-and-unfair-punishment">white families have 20 times more wealth</a> than families of color. Our research identifies increasing racial inequality in home values as a key reason this gap persists and has doubled since 1980. </p>
<p>These growing gaps don’t affect just homeowners. They also affect renters. Since 1980, real estate prices have risen <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/06/us-house-prices-are-going-to-rise-at-twice-the-speed-of-inflation-and-pay-reuters-poll.html">far faster than inflation</a>, <a href="https://www.bankrate.com/real-estate/places-where-pay-raises-dramatically-trail-home-price-gains/">incomes</a> and prices of <a href="https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/four-ways-todays-high-home-prices-affect-larger-economy">consumer goods like food or clothing</a>. As a result, housing costs now make up a larger proportion of residents’ expenses. </p>
<p>Families who have historically owned homes in white neighborhoods can afford these increased costs because their appreciating home values have expanded their relative wealth. But for everyone else, high housing costs are a burden. For many renters, high housing costs combined with stagnant wages have created an acute and worsening <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/12/insider/housing-evictions.html">affordable housing crisis</a>. Many struggle to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/29/opinion/sunday/coronavirus-evictions-superspreader.html">remain housed</a> – including during the pandemic – and very few can save enough to transition into home ownership.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/359628/original/file-20200923-24-1d2i7yg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A young girl holds a bilingual sign reading 'no evictions/no desalojos' while being comforted by her sister" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/359628/original/file-20200923-24-1d2i7yg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/359628/original/file-20200923-24-1d2i7yg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/359628/original/file-20200923-24-1d2i7yg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/359628/original/file-20200923-24-1d2i7yg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/359628/original/file-20200923-24-1d2i7yg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/359628/original/file-20200923-24-1d2i7yg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/359628/original/file-20200923-24-1d2i7yg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Protesters in Reading, Pennsylvania, on Sept. 1 demand a moratorium on evictions during the pandemic.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/aleandra-lara-stands-between-her-sister-julmeiris-lara-and-news-photo/1270122231?adppopup=true">Ben Hasty/MediaNews Group/Reading Eagle via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Finally, because the property taxes that pay for physical infrastructure, public services and other amenities are determined based on <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/20/opinion/fair-housing-act-trump.html">real estate values</a>, the higher home values in white neighborhoods enable <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/economy/reports/2019/07/15/469838/racial-disparities-home-appreciation/">better-funded schools</a>, libraries, parks and utilities – even <a href="https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-0131-highsmith-flint-water-crisis-20160131-story.html">essential services like clean water</a>. </p>
<h2>What still isn’t known</h2>
<p>Researchers are still investigating which governmental policies and industry incentives might eliminate <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/research/devaluation-of-assets-in-black-neighborhoods/">ongoing and severe inequalities</a> across the U.S. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122418781774">housing market</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/">Reparations for those hurt by racist federal housing policies</a> and <a href="https://financialservices.house.gov/calendar/eventsingle.aspx?EventID=403835">new legal standards for property appraising</a> are proposals that could make important first steps toward equity. But fully addressing racism in real estate will require reshaping the very foundations of the U.S. housing market.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/146273/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>New research shows homes in white areas have appreciated $200,000 more since 1980 than similar homes in nonwhite areas – a result of both old racist housing policies and modern real estate practices.Junia Howell, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of PittsburghElizabeth Korver-Glenn, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of New MexicoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1372962020-07-08T14:41:44Z2020-07-08T14:41:44ZHow the dimensions of human inequality affect who and what we are<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/343562/original/file-20200623-188891-5rq20f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A Black Lives Matter protester in Senegal.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">JOHN WESSELS/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>What does it mean to be human today? It is an <a href="https://stias.ac.za/2017/08/what-do-we-wish-to-change-with-regard-to-race-racism-and-racialism/">excellent starting point</a> for thinking about human inequality. </p>
<p>To be human, in an elementary sense, means three things.</p>
<p>First, you are a sexed living organism, capable of feeling pain and pleasure and of reproduction, with a delimited lifespan of development and decay, subject to vicissitudes of health and illness.</p>
<p>Secondly, you are a person, with a self and a reflexive capacity, flourishing or suffering in social environments.</p>
<p>Thirdly, you are a creative, goal-oriented actor, collective as well as individual, endowed with resources of varying size and kind.</p>
<p>The possibilities of flourishing as a human are shaped by processes of (in)equality. Differences are either given – by God or by Nature – or chosen as lifestyles. </p>
<p>Unlike difference, inequality is a <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-does-racism-prevail-leading-scholars-apply-their-minds-138363">historical social construction</a>.</p>
<p>The three-dimensionality of humanity gives us three kinds of human inequality. These are vital, existential and resource.</p>
<h2>The three kinds of human inequality</h2>
<p>Vital inequality refers to socially determined distributions of health and ill health and of your lifespan. It can be measured in life expectancy and in health expectancy or your years without serious illness. Where demographic life tables are missing, infant and child mortality are more accessible indicators.</p>
<p>Existential inequality sums up the unequal social treatment of persons. On one end of the spectrum resides denial of recognition, autonomy, existential security, dignity and respect. These can be achieved through acts of neglect, bullying, degradation and humiliation. The ultimate result is a denial of their humanness. At the opposite end are selective attention, freedom, emotional security, encouragement, respect and admiration.</p>
<p>Existential inequality is structured and processed by categories and lenses of othering – such as sex, race, ethnicity, caste or religion. It is arguably the most hurtful and wounding of inequalities. It has given rise to a range of egalitarian movements – feminist, anti-racist, nationalist, anti-caste, anti-bigotry. It has been an important driver of workers’ movements, in which the demand for recognition of workers’ human dignity has been central.</p>
<p>So far, however, existential inequality has received little systematic <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235388737_The_Killing_Fields_of_Inequality">analysis</a> and <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/Between_Sex_and_Power.html?id=7oQlkfj_MKkC&redir_esc=y">study</a>. </p>
<p>It is hardly quantifiable and is difficult to compare. Legal practices and public norms, recurrent demographic and health surveys, opinion surveys, anthropological studies, autobiographies and media reporting provide qualitative evidence.</p>
<p>Resource inequality expresses the unequal allocation of resources to act among human actors. It is most frequently gauged through distributions of income and wealth and of so-called human capital. Less studied in this context, although highly relevant, are distributions of power and rights.</p>
<p>The three dimensions of inequality are interconnected and interact or “<a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-does-intersectionality-mean-104937">intersect</a>”, but each has its own dynamic and trajectory, globally and nationally.</p>
<h2>What othering does</h2>
<p>Othering means seeing and treating a set of people as being of a different kind than you and your type of people, as strange, peculiar and (usually) inferior.
Viewing “race” as a category of existential othering means highlighting its character as a socio-cultural construction that is subject to change. This occurs alongside <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2017/nov/08/us-vs-them-the-sinister-techniques-of-othering-and-how-to-avoid-them">many other constructs</a> such as gender, ethnicity, caste and religion. </p>
<p>In early 20th century Europe, “race” was often synonymous with ethnicity. For example, “the British race” or references to geo-ethnic groups, such as the “Alpine” or “Mediterranean race”. In continental Europe today, “race” is hardly used at all. </p>
<p>This does not mean that discriminatory and hateful othering has disappeared. It means it is now operating with other labels like Arabs, Muslims, immigrants, Africans…</p>
<p>The existential perspective leads us to human self-formation and its connection with capability formation. The very meaning of racism and of patriarchy is to deny self-esteem and self-confidence – indeed any self at all – especially to black (or any other racial target) and girl children. It installs shame, self-contempt and fear instead. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-does-racism-prevail-leading-scholars-apply-their-minds-138363">Why does racism prevail? Leading scholars apply their minds</a>
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<p>Such punitive processes are, of course, not always successful. But they often inflict lasting wounds. Prejudice and stigma act as stressors on the victims and have both somatic (bodily) and psychological <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/4901753_Discrimination_Social_Identity_and_Durable_Inequalities">effects</a>. They also, by themselves, cause under-performance by the targets. Psychology experiments have shown that when marginalised groups are told they are inferior, they <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/247505973_Stereotype_Threat_When_minority_members_underperform">perform badly</a> on given tasks. Conversely, when told they are expected to be superior, their performance improves.</p>
<h2>Two sets of burdens</h2>
<p>Children of poor, oppressed and/or discriminated populations are loaded with two sets of heavy burdens. These cause many or most of them to under perform. One is the burden of social determinants, of ill-health and stunted development, which goes along with not enough emotional security and positive social stimulation. In other words, vital inequality, which bears upon capability formation. The other operates through the negative impacts on self-development of esteem, confidence and ambition by existential processes of stigmatisation, humiliation and fear. </p>
<p>Both these childhood experiences tend to have lifelong effects, beginning life-curves of cumulated disadvantages. Furthermore, they provide reinforcing and reproducing confirmatory evidence of inferiority of the race, gender or caste. </p>
<p>And when some individuals of the put-down race, gender or caste manage to break through their discrimination and oppression, this is often used as further evidence of the inferiority of the category in question. The losers are regarded as deficient persons, of low-life existence. To hardcore racists, this is inherent and inherited. But after the liberation of Auschwitz, existential inequality is more effective when leaving its genetic background unnamed.</p>
<h2>Why racism prevails</h2>
<p>Unequal personal selves are produced by existential inequality. And they are fortified by early cognitive and social capability formation. This can explain much of the enduring longevity of racism, patriarchy, caste and religious disadvantage, even after their formative institutions are abolished. </p>
<p>Such institutions of inferiority-cum-superiority have no internal dialectic of change. Change comes exogenously, from the outside, from contingent cracks of the pillars sustaining the institutions. </p>
<p>Sub-institutional change, of everyday existential inequality, will require broader social and cultural <a href="https://stias.ac.za/2015/08/goran-therborn-singles-out-health-and-education-as-key-long-term-solutions-to-inequality/">transformations</a>. It will require equalising processes of self and capability formation. The current hardening of nationalism in power – the existing nation-states nationalism – and fundamentalist religious revival tend rather in the opposite direction.</p>
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<p><em>This article is part of a <a href="https://theconversation.com/africa/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=RaceSeries&sort=relevancy&language=en&date=all&date_from=&date_to=">series</a> of six. Other authors include Nina Jablonski, Barney Pityana, George Chaplin, Kira Erwin, Kathryn Pillay and Njabulo Ndebele.</em> </p>
<p><em>The three edited volumes of essays published by African Sun Media in 2018 (<a href="https://stias.ac.za/ideas/publications/volume-11-the-effects-of-race/">The Effects of Race</a>, edited by Nina G. Jablonski and Gerhard Maré), 2019 (<a href="https://stias.ac.za/ideas/publications/stias-series-volume-13-race-in-education/">Race in Education</a>, edited by Gerhard Maré), and 2020 (<a href="https://stias.ac.za/ideas/publications/stias-series-volume-15-persistence-of-race/">Persistence of Race</a>, edited by Nina G. Jablonski) contain the complete representation of the project’s scholarship.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/137296/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Göran Therborn does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A leading sociologist explains how different dimensions of humanity produce different kinds of inequality - and what that does to the least equal in society.Göran Therborn, Professor emeritus of Sociology, University of CambridgeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.